Exam 8: Enhancing Relationships

An assertive message takes your listener's feelings and rights into account as well as your own.

The ability to influence another in the direction we desire is _____.

Dialectics help us to understand the messy, oftentimes illogical nature of interpersonal relationships.

According to your book, aggressive messages frequently accomplish what the speaker intended.

"Grave dressing" describes the story we offer to others as to why a relationship ended.

A lack of _____ is said to be the primary characteristic of destructive conflict.

Briefly explain the predictability vs. novelty relational dialectic.

Using "I" statements tends to result in defensiveness on the part of other people.

Managing conflict means preventing it from occurring.

Which style of managing conflict is associated with a lose-lose mindset?

The individualization stage is a part of relational escalation.

The common family today is composed of two parents with the father as the breadwinner and the mother as the stay-at-home homemaker.

The relationship stage in which you begin to spend more time together, begin depending upon each other for self-confirmation, and increase the variety of activities you participate in together is the _____ stage.

Briefly explain the openness vs. closedness relational dialectic.

Rather than get mad at her roommate for spending too much time in the bathroom, Anita decided to come up with some ideas she could talk with her about, so each of them could get into the bathroom when they needed to. Anita's conflict management style would be described as _____.

People who have a win-win approach to conflict, and always seek to win, have a confrontational style of conflict management.

Research has found that most adults tend to have on average _____ best friends.

Which of the following is one of Wilmot and Hocker's hallmarks of a constructive conflict?

_____ conflict is characterized by a lack of flexibility and may do damage to a relationship.

During a recent conflict between Bill and Bob, Bill tried to blame Bert, using Bert as a scapegoat so that Bill could avoid taking responsibility for the conflict. Bill was using a _____ style.