Identify at least three unproductive conflict management strategies and their productive alternatives. Illustrate your response with concrete examples from everyday life and from your personal experience

What will be an ideal response?


Answer: The text lists ten nonproductive strategies and their productive alternatives, as follows: 1) Win-lose strategies, and their alternative win-win solutions. The latter leads to mutual rewards and eliminates feelings of resentment. 2) Avoidance, or avoiding conflict, and its productive alternative, active fighting. 3) Force, both emotional and physical, and its productive alternative in the form of talk. 4) Blame, which does nothing to resolve the conflict, and its productive alternative empathy, in which one feels what the other is feeling. 5) Gunnysacking, or the practice of storing up grievances so as to unload them at another time, and its productive alternative present focus: keeping focus on the issue at hand. 6) Manipulation, or an avoidance of open conflict by emotional manipulation, and its productive alternative spontaneity and honesty. 7) Personal rejection, or withdrawing in order to make the other participant break down, and its productive alternative acceptance, in which one expresses positive feelings. 8) Fighting below the belt or “beltlining”, deliberately seeking to hurt the other person, and its alternative fighting above the belt, in which the other person can absorb the blow. 9) Face-detracting strategies, in which one attacks the other’s need for positive face, and their alternative in face-enhancing strategies, which help the other person maintain a positive image. 10) Verbal aggressiveness, in which one attacks the other’s self-concept, and its alternative argumentativeness, which refers to one’s willingness to argue for a point of view. Specific examples will vary.

Communication & Mass Media

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