ÒÒËate comes home after a long tiring day at J-∖. work to find the house messy, her daughter crying, and her son covered in mud while her husband, Kevin, is watching television.
Her hopes of spending a relaxing evening at home suddenly vanish and she feels frustrated and angry. She immediately lashes out at Kevin, “What kind of father are you? Don’t you hear and see your own children?” Kevin becomes defensive, “What kind of mother are you, coming home from work late every night this week?” Hurt by Kevin’s comment, Kate strikes back, “Well, at least I don’t sit around watching TV and ignoring my kids.” When Kevin doesn’t answer and continues to look at the screen, Kate becomes exasperated and turns the TV off to get his attention.
Now Kevin is even angrier. “Hey,” he exclaims, “I was only watching until the weather came on. I need to know if it’s going to rain since I’m coaching tomorrow. You have to control everything, don’t you?” The conversation carries on this way for a few more minutes until they realize that their daughter has stopped crying but is watching them with an anxious face, while their son has retreated to sit alone in a corner, mud and all.As the above scenario illustrates, “To be in conflict is to be emotionally charged” (Bodtker & Jameson, 2001, p. 260). Indeed, scholars have argued that people define conflict episodes based on the emotions they experience (Jones, 2000). Serious conflicts are characterized by high levels of emotional activation, whereas destructive conflicts are marked by both negative affect and aggressive behavior. Conflict entails an expressed struggle between two or more interdependent people who perceive that they have incompatible goals (Cahn, 1992). This struggle is most likely when resources are scarce, when each person attaches importance to her or his goals, and when those goals are hard to obtain (Wilmot & Hocker, 2007). Conflict episodes are often filled with emotion, both in terms of the negative affect connected to the interruption of goals and in terms of reactions to the partner’s communication. Although conflict episodes can end with satisfying results, negative emotion and destructive communication often sabotage people’s chances for a successful outcome.
This chapter highlights the important role that emotion plays in interpersonal conflict.
First, emotion is conceptualized, with similarities between emotion and conflict emphasized. Second, six categories of conflict-related emotion—(1) hostile, (2) vulnerable, (3) flat, (4) positive, (5) self-conscious, and (6) fear- ful—and the ways each of these types of emotion are communicated during conflict are discussed. Third, John Gottman’s (1994) cascade model and Judee Burgoon’s (Burgoon & Hale, 1988) expectancy violations theory (EVT) are described as exemplar theories for further understanding emotion within conflict interaction. Finally, the chapter ends with a description of critical issues that need exploration in future research.