The social confrontation episode

Abstract

Social confrontation is a particular kind of communication episode initiated when one actor signals another actor that his or her behavior has violated a rule or expectation for appropriate conduct within the relationship or situation. A model of social confrontation, developed over a series of studies, is presented. The model identifies the major substantive variations in social confrontation episodes and serves to integrate a number of related phenomena in the study of problematic situations. Social confrontation is portrayed as “issue‐driven” and the model describes the various tracks of development from initiation to resolution based upon the issues of the episode: (1) the legitimacy of the invoked rule, (2) the legitimacy of any superseding rules, (3) whether or not the person actually performed the behavior in question, (4) whether or not the behavior constitutes a violation of the rule, and (5) whether or not the accused accepts responsibility.