Gender Differences and Similarities in Strategies for Managing Conflict with Friends and Romantic Partners

Using hypothetical vignettes, we investigated the extent to which gender differences in conflict-management strategies depended
on the relationship context of a same-gender friendship vs. a romantic relationship. Associations between conflict-management
strategies, goals and gender-typed traits also were assessed. Men (131) and women (203) undergraduate students (19–25 years)
from a state university in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States participated. To assess expressive and instrumental
personality traits, participants completed the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence and Helmreich 1978). Participants also rated their endorsement of communal and agentic goals and strategies for managing hypothetical conflicts
presented in the “Peer Conflict Management Questionnaire.” This questionnaire, created for the purposes of this study, consisted
of 4 vignettes that portrayed hypothetical conflicts with a friend and a romantic partner. Results showed that women were
more likely than men to endorse communal strategies when managing conflict with a same-gender friend, but not with a romantic
partner. Women were more likely than men to endorse agentic strategies for managing conflict with a romantic partner, but
not with a same-gender friend. For conflicts with a same-gender friend, communal goals, but not expressive traits or gender,
predicted communal strategy endorsement. For conflicts with a romantic partner, gender and agentic goals predicted agentic
strategies; instrumental traits did not. Implications for understanding consequences of gender-typed relationship processes
are discussed. The contextual specificity of gender differences and similarities are emphasized.