It is well-established that women do the vast majority of household labor. West and Zimmerman's concept of "doing gender" suggests that sex inequity persists because housework enables women to demonstrate their gendered identities to others. However, changes in gendered norms for housework may be underway because recent studies indicate…

Individuals first learn about conflict as children, within relationships with parents, siblings, and peers. Sibling and peer interaction may be contexts within which children learn how to manage conflict successfully with members of both the same and opposite sex. The goals of this study were to provide normative data on sibling and peer conflict…

A study determined if an individual's approach to conflict management could be altered by completing a college conflict resolution class. Subjects enrolled in a 3-hour, 16-week college conflict resolution course at a medium-sized, midwestern university. The pretest condition consisted of 15 females and 13 males, of whom 10 were undergraduate and…

Use of a mediator to facilitate voluntary agreements between disputants is becoming a widely used method of conflict resolution in a variety of contexts. This study simulated a dispute to examine the influence of mediator and negotiator gender on mediator behavior. Male (N=94) and female (N=94) college students mediated a computer-simulated…

The purpose of this study was to identify conflict resolution strategies used by siblings when they chose television programs to watch and to examine differences in strategies associated with sex of child, the age interval between siblings, and their ordinal position. Children, 116 pairs of siblings in first through sixth grade, were interviewed…

A study was conducted to explore how males and females differ in their use of interpersonal conflict management styles. Subjects were 71 male and 76 female students from an introductory interpersonal communication course at a large midwestern state university. They were instructed to think of an important relationship with either an opposite-sex…

Recent attempts to predict marital success or failure have explored the explanations couples offer for interpersonal events. To investigate whether positive and negative affect would lead to different causal attributions in a conflict-resolution conversation, 20 married couples were asked to observe a conflict-resolution and a control conversation…

This study explored the potential relationships of personal identity with collective identities based on membership in socially disadvantaged groups (e.g. being Latino/a, being a woman) and socially advantaged group memberships (e.g. being a man) for Latinos and Latinas. The interrelationships among the cultural identity, gender identity, and…

To gather information on the role of gender in parent-adolescent interactions, a study was conducted of patterns of alliances formed during disagreements between 28 male and 28 female early adolescents and their parents. Interactions among adolescents and their parents were recorded while they planned an ideal vacation, and the transcripts were…

A meta-analysis examined sex-related differences in conflict styles to resolve some of the competing claims about the existence, antecedents, and nature of these differences. To explore the effect of biological sex on the selection of conflict management strategies (CMS), existing studies relevant to sex differences in the selection of CMS were…

A study compared male and female managers' preferences for using communication-based as opposed to power-centered strategies for resolving employer-employee disputes. Subjects, 40 male and 40 female middle and upper level managers, were interviewed and asked to report their preferred manner of resolving four different personnel problems: (1) an…

A study examined the means by which inferences and emotions combine to motivate conflict escalation in response to nonverbal displays of status. Subjects, 64 male and 105 female volunteers enrolled in communication courses at a university located in the northeastern part of the United States, completed a verbal aggressiveness scale and a personal…

This study examined the relationship between children's gender-typed conversational styles and joint problem-solving performance. Sixty preschool children between 4 and 5 1/2 years completed three problems with a same-sex or opposite-sex peer. Two structured tasks, copying a Tinkertoy model and stringing beads; and one unstructured task, building…

Establishment of identity represents a normative developmental crisis at adolescence. It is commonly speculated that adopted adolescents find resolution of the identity crisis especially difficult. Some theorists and researchers suggest that adoptees who search for information about their birth heritage have failed to make satisfactory progress…

Although many studies have examined the competencies associated with being well-liked by the peer group, far less is known about the competencies children need in order to make and maintain good quality friendships. This study addressed friendship tasks, investigating 5 of 10 previously hypothesized competencies necessary to make and maintain good…