The Big Five Personality Factors

Recently, considerable research by psychologists and communication scholars has attempted to uncover the most efficient and inclusive set of personality factors. These researchers have converged on a five-factor model—the ‘Big Five’ (e.g., Goldberg, 1992).

Extraversion includes assertive, gregarious, outgoing, and sociable behaviors, whereas Introversion involves being timid, quiet, deferential, and shy.

Agreeableness refers to being cooperative, warm, understanding, and altruis­tic, whereas Antagonism is reflected in rude, harsh, and impolite behaviors. Conscientiousness involves disciplined, organized, smart, and reliable behaviors, whereas Undisciplined includes being lazy, disorganized, and indecisive.

Neuroticism refers to being anxious, depressed, negative, and insecure, whereas Emotional Stability is seen in self-confident, self-contained, and calm behaviors.

Openness represents being open to new ideas, creative, and reflective, whereas Closedness refers to conventional, traditional, and practical behaviors.

Although all five factors have some connection to conflict management, research has unveiled two as the most salient—Agreeableness and Neuroticism.

Agreeableness

Some people are generally understanding and cooperative; other people tend toward disagreement. It is no surprise, then, that agreeableness has consistently correlated with direct and cooperative behavior (e.g., Jensen-Campbell, Gleason, Adams, Malcolm, 2003; Lanthier, 2007).

Several of Graziano et al.’s findings reveal how agreeable-antagonistic peo­ple perceive and interact during conflict. Here are a few of their findings: (1) Regarding perceptions, agreeable people liked their interaction partner, they perceived that their partners were more agreeable, and they viewed the conflict setting as more relaxed; (2) regarding verbal strategies, all participants preferred the use of negotiation over power assertion and disengagement strategies. Agree­able participants, however, were less likely than antagonistic participants to favor power assertive tactics. Also, agreeable people were more likely to see various strategies as appropriate in certain relationships. For example, agreeable partici­pants viewed negotiation as more appropriate in parental, sibling, and roommate relationships than with parents; (3) regarding nonverbal behaviors, agreeable people were more likely to show less defensiveness (with crossed arms), more immediacy (by leaning forward more and smiling), and less distraction (by talk­ing with their hands less).

In a follow-up study involving adolescents, Jensen-Campbell and Graziano (2001) found that self-rated and teacher-rated agreeableness correlated nega­tively with hypothetical fighting conflict tactics. In a word, Agreeableness (for teachers as well as students) was negatively associated with walking away, use of physical force, and use of threats.

The authors explained how Agreeableness can apply to interpersonal conflict situations: “Conceptually, Extraversion deals with social impact, whereas Agreea­bleness deals with motives for maintaining positive relations with others” (Jensen- Campbell & Grazino, 2001, p. 325, italics original). Because agreeable people want to maintain positive relationships with others, they are more likely to engage in positive perceptions, positive attributions of the other person’s behav­ior. These positive perceptions and judgments then lead to constructive conflict strategies (Jensen-Campbell & Grazino, p. 329). As indicated at the beginning of this chapter, being agreeable over time does not occur on its own. Instead, indi­viduals must make efforts to control their thoughts as well as actions (Jensen and Graziano, 2007). It takes mindful effort to be agreeable. Based on the agreeable­ness research, we offer

Conclusion 7.1: Agreeableness predisposes people to maintain a positive attitude toward other people and engage in more negotiation and nonconfrontation tactics.

Suggestion 7.2: Be mindful to adopt agreeableness as your ongoing way of manag­ing conflict.

Neuroticism

In an opposite manner, Neuroticism (vs. Emotional Stability) concerns how peo­ple who generally experience negative feelings remain cynical of other people’s motives. As Thomsen and Gilbert (1998) observed, “Neuroticism (N) and its component subfactors (e.g., trait anxiety, depression, and anger) correlate with negative affective states” when engaged in conflict (p. 835). That is, Neurotic people experience negative arousal more than emotionally stable people do when faced with interpersonal problems. Their increased negativity leads to negative perceptions of their interaction partners, which behaviors might function to address their negative perceptions, and use of conflict strategies that comport with those perceptions.

Note: The reasons people hold negative attitudes toward, and engage in nega­tive behaviors with other people vary.

Neurotic people (versus emotionally stable people) are not as functional in managing conflict. As one might anticipate, the development of conflict unfolds in negative but predictable ways. For instance, Lanthier (2007) found that neu­roticism was positively linked to the severity of sibling conflicts. Siblings relied on direct fighting tactics (specifically, in the shows hostility and put downs/rejects categories; Table 2.3) when one of them was neurotic than when they were both emotionally stable.

As one would anticipate, people who are neurotic tend to rely on direct fight­ing and indirect fighting (Tables 2.3 and 2.4) more than do emotionally stable people to get their way. Antonioni (1999) found that neurotic managers relied on indirect fighting to deal with workplace conflict. Thomsen and Gilbert found an interesting but dysfunctional pattern that neurotics tend to employ: First, they perceive their social situations negatively and so do not trust other people; next, they often complain, criticize, blame the other for the conflict, and use other fighting conflict tactics; finally, when confronted on the issue, neurotic people act defensive, use guilt-inducements, and leave the scene in a “hit and run” manner (Sillars & Wilmot, 1994).

Bolger and Zuckerman (1995) summarized two studies regarding how neu­roticism and conflict communication mutually affect each other in stressful situations:

Bolger and Schilling (1991) found that a differential exposure-reactivity model was the most appropriate.

Bolger and Zuckerman found that high neurotic participants engage in more conflicts per week than did low neurotic participants, which verifies the idea that narcissists gravitate toward/cause incompatibilities. They also found that high neurotic participants experience greater negative reactivity in terms of anger and depression as a result of their conflicts than did low neurotic participants. Finally, Bolger and Zuckerman found that high neurotic people use different coping responses including planning problem solving, self-controlling behaviors, and indirect fighting than did low neurotic people. In addition, they found that high neurotic people tend to use more direct fighting (especially making accusations; Table 2.3) of the other person’s conflict and coping behaviors than did their low neurotic counterparts.

At this point, neurotic readers as well as emotionally stable readers might won­der how to use strategic communication given the high negative arousal that accompanies a negative view of others. Research suggests that neurotic people should adjust their directions of thought. For instance, Harris and Lightsey (2005) found that constructive thinking reduced the impact of neuroticism on individu­als’ subjective well-being, in particular, on their experience of negative affect. Although neuroticism was strongly associated with negative mood measured one month later, the ability to think constructively significantly lowered the strength of the asso­ciation between neuroticism and the experience of negative moods. One subscale of con­structive thinking, “naive optimism,” was particularly effective in changing the neuroticism-negative affect link.

Given the review of neuroticism, we offer the following:

Conclusion 7.2: Neuroticism involves negative attitudes and physiological responses to people, especially during conflict.

Conclusion 7.3: Neurotics gravitate toward incompatibility, which instigates conflicts that verify their negative attitudes and behaviors.

Conclusion 7.4: Creative thinking can help people change their negative predisposi­tions into more emotionally stable tendencies.

Suggestion 7.3: Decide if you want to engage in conflict with negative people who invite conflict.

Suggestion 7.4: Infuse alternative, creative ways of approaching problems when interacting with, or experiencing narcissistic tendencies.

BOX 7.1

Argumentativeness

Primarily during the 1980s and 1990s, Infante, Rancer, and colleagues exam­ined "argumentativeness" (e.g., Infante, 1987; Infante, Chandler, & Rudd, 1989; Infante & Rancer, 1982; Rancer, 1998). Argumentativeness refers to the tendency to engage in discussions about controversial issues. It is measured through two factors representing one trait—approaching arguments ver­sus avoiding arguments. However, the dimensionality of the argumentative measure has been recently questioned elsewhere (Levine & Kotowsi, 2010). Regardless, this body of research has direct impact on our understanding of strategic conflict.

Argumentativeness is unrelated to verbal aggressiveness or has a nega­tive correlation with verbally aggressive tendencies (Infante & Wigley, 1986). The idea is that argumentativeness refers to being attracted to verbal debate, whereas aggression does away with rational argument and replaces it with aggressive behavior. Finally, argumentativeness differs across cultures (Nicot- era & Robinson, 2010). For example, Rancer found that Americans are more argumentative than Japanese, and American women are more argumentative than Korean women (but there is no significant difference among men). In addition, people with an independent self-construal had higher argumen­tative scores.