The Psychology of Gender 4th Edition

Romantic Relationships 327

The display of negative affect in women

may not reflect distress as much as their ap-

proach to managing the conflict. Whereas

women are more likely to confront the con-

flict, men are more likely to withdraw or be

defensive (Carstensen et al., 2004). When dis-

tressed couples come into the laboratory, the

wife sees it as an opportunity to resolve a con-

flict. Thus, she confronts the conflict, which

includes displays of negative affect. The hus-

band’s goal, by contrast, is to keep the con-

flict from escalating; thus he responds to her

negative affect with displays of either neutral

or positive affect. That is, he tries to smooth

things over. Rather than perceiving his re-

sponse as a positive one, she is frustrated that

he is not becoming engaged in this conflict.

In other words, she perceives her husband’s

lack of negative affect as a sign that he is not

engaged in the interaction. Women then re-

spond by intensifying their negative behavior,

which is referred to asnegative reciprocity.

Then, the conflict escalates.

The following exchange illustrates this

sequence of events:

Wife: Let’s talk about why you don’t help

out more with the children. (confrontation

of conflict with negative affect)

Husband: You do such a good job with

the children that it doesn’t seem like this

is really an issue of conflict. (attempt to

neutralize the affect with positive statement)

Wife: : You just don’t get it, do you? If

you spent more time with the children, you

could do a good job too. (more negative

affect, reciprocity of negative affect, escala-

tion of conflict)

There is some evidence that gay and

lesbian couples may be more effective in

addressing conflict than heterosexual cou-

ples. In a relationship interaction study,

on relationships—but only in individualis-

tic cultures. However, women and men may

approach conflict in their personal relation-

ships somewhat differently than they approach

conflict at work. When Israeli couples were

asked about the conflict tactics that they and

their partners employed, both women and

men were more likely to say that they used soft

tactics (e.g., express disappointment, express

appreciation for compliance) rather than

harsh tactics (e.g., threaten, get angry, empha-

size obligation; Schwarzwald, Koslowsky, &

Ishak-Nir, 2008). However, men were more

likely than women to say that their partner

used harsh tactics. Use of harsh tactics was

associatedwith lower marital satisfaction.

One way conflict management has been

studied is by observing couples’ behavior

in the laboratory as they discuss a relation-

ship problem. Distressed spouses in general

display more disagreement and more criti-

cism than nondistressed spouses, but this

difference is more apparent among women

than men. Women display more emotion,

in particular more negative affect, than men

during conflict discussions (Heyman et al.,

2009)—and this is especially the case among

distressed couples (Carstensen, Gottman, &

Levenson, 2004). However, cultural factors

can override this tendency. In a study of

U.S. and Pakistani couples, U.S. wives were

more negative than Pakistani wives in low

satisfaction couples likely because Pakistani

culture inhibits the expression of emotion

in women (Rehman & Holtzworth-Munroe,

2007). And, negative communication was

more strongly related to marital dissatisfac-

tion among U.S. than Pakistani couples. This

explains why women in the United States are

referred to as the “emotional barometer” of

relationships (Floyd & Markman, 1983): If

the woman is displaying high negativity, the

relationship is likely to be in distress.

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