The organization and dynamics of adolescent conflict with parents and friends

In telephone interviews, 212 adolescents described all disagreements arising the preceding day that involved parents or friends. Conflicts were organized in a similar manner in both relationships: Topics, resolutions, and outcomes were linked together and were usually tied to affect afterward. The specific dynamics of conflict, however, varied in a manner that reflects differences in relationship power and stability. Relative to those with friends, parent-child conflicts more often involved a combination of daily hassle topics, neutral or angry affect afterward, power-assertive resolutions, and win-lose outcomes. Relative to those with parents, friend conflicts more often involved a combination of relationship topics, friendly affect afterward, disengaged resolutions, and equal or no outcomes. Most differences in disagreement dynamics were not a function of differences in the rate at which topics of conflict arose in each relationship: Across topics, parents usually reported more coercion than friends, and friends usually reported more mitigation than parents. Key Words: adolescence, adolescent-peer relationships, interpersonal conflict, parent-adolescent relationships. Disagreements are a ubiquitous part of interpersonal relationships. Over the course of a given day, most adolescents find themselves involved in one or more conflicts with family and peers (Laursen & Collins, 1994). Because disagreements are a microcosm of larger patterns of social interaction, conflicts usually are managed in a manner that reflects salient properties of a relationship (Laursen, Hartup, & Koplas, 1996). Parent-child relationships are obligatory and hierarchical, characteristics that invite coercion. In contrast, friendships are voluntary and egalitarian, so participants expect mitigation. Support for these distinctions comes from research that contrasts parent-child relationships and peer relationships on a limited number of specific conflict behaviors (see Canary, Cupach, & Messman, 1995, for review). Although an understanding and mastery of relationship-appropriate behaviors is of critical importance to interpersonal functioning, little is known about whether these relationship differences extend to the way in which conflicts unfold or are organized and to the particular patterns or dynamics that prevail. Our study examines adolescent self-reports of daily disagreements to identify how conflicts are organized. It is designed to test the assertion that the dynamics of conflicts with friends differ from those with parents and that the differences are not an artifact of the topics that provoke disagreement in each relationship. Shantz (1987, p. 285) described interpersonal conflict as a "time-distributed social episode" comprised of several discrete elements. These components of conflict include the topic, the initiation, the intensity, the resolution, and the outcome. Disagreements have a sequential structure; one component (e.g., the outcome) follows another (e.g., the resolution) in an orderly progression. This organizational scheme may be likened to that of a play or a novel (Laursen & Collins, 1994). Typically, there is a protagonist and an antagonist (the conflict participants), a theme (the topic), a complication (the initiation), rising action and a crisis (the resolution), and a denouement (the outcome). Plots unfold according to a prescribed sequence, and so do conflicts: Each is comprised of discrete units that combine to form a coherent whole. The organization of conflict refers to the structure of a disagreement and the extent to which discrete components are interconnected. Our study was designed to outline the organization of adolescent conflicts with parents and friends. There are other parallels between plots and conflicts. Both may be scripted and formulaic, sharing a common set of defining characteristics. Those with similar distinguishing features fall into groups akin to genres. …