Face Threats In Conflict Escalation: Politeness Theory Versus Social Interactionist Theory

Authors:

Abstract: One of the most significant issues in conflict scholarship and practice across disciplines is how conflicts escalate. Yet, explaining why some conflicts escalate while others fizzle out is less well understood. Two theories that provide some insight into why conflicts are likely or unlikely to escalate are Politeness Theory (PT) and Social Interactionist Theory (SInT). SInT predicts that when individuals are confronted with an attack, they are more likely to escalate the conflict by reciprocating the attack if the original attack is perceived as intentional and not inadvertent. In contrast, PT predicts that attacks will not be reciprocated because individuals will be motivated to restore politeness or civility and not reciprocate attacks. The goal of this paper is to explore these contending predictions by conducting an experiment. This study created a 2 x 2 x 3 x 2 design in which subjects read conflict scenarios that varied power (equal/unequal), relationship closeness (personal/impersonal), three levels of conflict escalation and two levels of conflict intensity and were asked in a role play to decide how they would respond to personal attacks in these scenarios. A total of 1120 subjects completed the online experiment across 24 conditions. The results indicate that role players preferred to refocus the conversation rather than to fight back in the face of escalation. This finding supports PT. Other results, however, support the SInT prediction, showing that in a more distant relational or impersonal situations role players were more justified in upbraiding a lower power person to maintain that relationship. Generally, the results provide some support for each theoretical position depending on various contextual parameters.

Track: COMM

Keywords: Conflict, Escalation, Politeness Theory, Power, Reaction Functions, Social Interactionist Theory