There is No Away: Where Do People Go When They Avoid an Interpersonal Conflict?

Abstract

When people avoid conflict, there is no "away." Where do they go physically or mentally? Both engaging and avoiding have a push and a pull. If we knew where avoiders go, we could study the pull of avoidance. This is a descriptive study (N = 446) of interpersonal conflict. We found that physical and mental avoidance appeared with similar frequency, and that they could occur in combination. People often recognized their need for avoidance early, based on the topic being familiar or various signals of trouble. Avoidance during the conflict could be physical or mental, but notably involved false agreement or topic manipulation. The possibility of violence (physical, verbal, or emotional) was often relevant. Relationship worries frequently motivated the avoidance. After the avoidance rumination was common, often centering on what we called "festering anger." This article was inspired by the trash bins at one of our institutions. One of us was wandering through the hallway vaguely thinking about an undergraduate class later in the day in which he was going to cover distributive, integrative, and avoidant approaches to conflict. His eye fell on one of the pairs of trash receptacles in the hallway. One large cardboard box was marked "recycling," with graphics and notes on various recyclable items. But the other was labeled "trash" and prominently displayed the slogan, "Throwing that away? There is no away." When people avoid a conflict, they do something or go somewhere. But where is that? Where is "away"? What do people do there? We have substantial literatures on how to engage in conflict. We have whole graduate programs in negotiation, mediation, and collective bargaining. We have full bookshelves explaining how to aim a conflict interaction at being constructive (vs. destructive), integrative (vs. distributive), cooperative (vs. competitive), far-sighted (vs. shortsighted), task-oriented (vs. emotional), realistic (vs. unrealistic), and many other distinctions. A multitude of books gives practical advice on how to implement cooperative, dialogic, reflective, and other kinds of tactics (i.e., where to go and what to do when you are being integrative). But when we discover parties being avoidant, they seem to fall out of our literature, at least in comparison with the far more substantial scholarship about the various flavors of conflict engagement. Avoidance is not trash-our metaphor should not be taken that far-but it does seem accurate to say that we have not much explored where "away" is. We are grateful to Delnaz Najim and Zachary Sinclair for their valuable service as coders. Both were undergraduates at the first author's institution.

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