Asadullah Siddiqui
COM200-W2
11/14/11
Paper 3: Idiotic Conflict
Interpersonal Conflict: Recently I had an interpersonal conflict with one of my best friends. We
had big disagreement on the morality of WWII, whether or not dropping the atomic bombs is
justifiable. I came with the argument that it was completely justifiable due to the already heavy
casualties of the war and the increase in death toll which another invasion would provide. My
friend came from the side that Japan was out of resources and money to continue a war effort,
as well as that an invasion would have quickly ended the war rather than destroying two entire
cities. This disagreement lasted around an hour and we gained no peace. At the end we both
had our own opinions and left it at that. Using distributive skills, as described in Human
Communication, Motivation, Knowledge, and Skills, we continuously argued, criticized, and
ignored the other’s ploy of persuasion. I tried to use some integrative skills to bring peace to
the situation but he stubbornly kept fighting with his opinion. It was very interesting how many
deep interruptions there were, interrupting each other during the middle of a sentence mostly.
The conversation included ideational conflict, which is conflict based on different opinions to
define problems (Morreale, Spitzberg, Barge p.256). We basically had our own disagreeing
opinions towards a situation and could not come together to form a solution. Our conversation
had a lot of adaptability as well, which is the ability to alter skills as the conversation evolves
(Morreale, Spitzberg, Barge p.198). We quickly found out that this was a very open-ended
argument and had no conclusion. There was no positive or negative altercation, our
relationship remained the same, yet I believe we found out that the other had a strong
communication competence. The only other thing to mention was we were both very
consistent in our conflict. Our arguments were constant and did not hold up until we could no
Asadullah Siddiqui
COM200-W2
11/14/11
longer persuade each other. This interpersonal conflict was interesting, with no perspective
taking, just a blood-bath to argue one’s ideas versus the other’s.
Group Conflict: I haven’t had any group conflicts recently, but last fall semester, my lab
partners and I had to work together for our chemistry lab’s final project. We had to design an
experiment to analyze the nutritional content of Kool-Aid, and there was a lot of conflict. There
were 3 of us, we all had a shared perception of being in the group, and we all had the goal
interdependence of getting an A on the assignment. These three factors officially made us a
small group. One of our group members was very lazy and slow to begin with. He didn’t want to
work hard, basically using me and the other partner to get a good grade. To start with the
assignment, we used previous experiments performed in the class to develop the procedure for
this experiment. At this stage we had a lot of procedural conflict, which is conflict derived from
the differences in opinion to use during a discussion or forming an agenda (Morreale, Spitzberg,
Barge p.256). Everyone had a different idea on how to perform the experiments which lead to a
lot of disagreement. One partner and myself wanted to do the procedure just at the professor
told us and the other one wanted to create a whole new procedure and make the whole thing a
lot more complicated. After we determined the procedure, we divided the work evenly for
each member, which lead to ideational conflict. We tried to distribute everything so that no
one was doing too much. There were three parts of the experiment so each person
theoretically could have done one part. We all wanted the easier parts with the least amount of
work, as well as responsibility. This conflict wasted time and we ended up behind on the
project. The trouble-making partner had a lot of conversational narcissism, caring only about
Asadullah Siddiqui
COM200-W2
11/14/11
himself within his communication (Morreale, Spitzberg, Barge p.201). Complaining about how
he has to work, do homework, and has other classes, really tainted our image of him. After the
experiments were complete, we had to do a final lab report. Somehow, one of the group
members ended up getting out of all the work while the remaining lab partner and I were left to
do everything on this assignment which was worth 40% of our grade. This left a negative
relationship with that other partner. The remaining partner and I finished the assignment and
ended up with a B on the report, while the partner who left received a C. The other partner and
I had a positive altercation during the experiment; it brought us closer as friends and gave trust
in one another. Our communication competence increased with one another, but with the
deserter partner, it definitely decreased. Overall the outcome came out positive between two
of us, but with the other, it developed a bad relationship. I tried to use avoidance style, ignoring
the conflicts, in order to create peace with my partners. We ended up using a distributive style,
the “win-lose” situation with high assertiveness but low cooperation, and we lost a friend in the
process. An integrative style, in which there is high assertiveness and high collaboration,
worked out between me and the remaining partner though, and that turned out very beneficial
(Morreale, Spitzberg, Barge p.256). In the end, the deserter partner’s self-interest left him in
the dust, while the integrative style of the remaining partner and myself earned us an A.
Computer-Mediated Conflict: