People are goal-oriented. Goals include: losing weight before a big event, attending a university, buying a car, et cetera.
As well, people interact with other people to obtain what they want or to retain what they have. Interpersonal goals include getting a friend to go out, persuading your partner to commitment, defending yourself against ridicule, and so forth.
Naturally, goals we seek often do not coincide with what other people want. When interpersonal goals are not compatible, then interaction partners have conflict. As Chapter 1 noted, many researchers believe that incompatible goals or perception of incompatibility between people defines interpersonal conflict (Putnam, 2006). Even if one does not define conflict in terms of incompatible goals, then one must at least acknowledge that incompatible goals constitute an important source of interpersonal conflict (Bergmann & Volkema, 1994).To understand conflict, the reader needs to learn about goals. Many communication scholars have linked interpersonal goals to communication behavior (Wilson, 2002). Such effort has meant that we had to first identify a set of representative goals that people pursue everyday and then tie those goals to communication behavior. This chapter discusses those efforts, and it reveals the nature of people as well as strategic conflict.
Conflict implies valued goals are at stake. Moreover, conflict situations become complex because each person tends to want more than one goal and so eyes the important goals differently (Clark & Delia, 1979; Dillard, Segrin, & Harden, 1989). What you value is not the same as what other people value. To obtain a pragmatic understanding of conflict messages, one must know about the nature of goals. Then one can understand how goals affect conflict strategies.