Is arguing healthy?

According to the Office for national statistics marriage rates are at an all-time low. With magazines such as psychology today claiming that arguing is, in fact, healthy in marriage, this raises the question to what manner of arguing is really considered 'healthy'?

Studies at Oregon State University based on Professor Dominic Infante research, show that the way couples argue is based on the style of relationship, whether there is a strong commitment or the couple is relatively new. Argumentativeness and aggression are viewed as constructive predispositions with people being considered as either 'high argumentatives' or 'low argumentatives. High agrumentatives are more likely to cause dispute and low argumentatives tend to shy away from confrontation.  Dominic Infante suggested that those involved in violent relationships communicate differently to their partners in comparison with those in non-violent relationships.

According to the research by Rudd, Burant and Beatty (1994) Women who are in an abusive relationship tend to use different strategies for keeping the peace within the relationship, which are more indirect such as ingratiation, promises, explanation. These are ways of avoiding confrontation so would more likely be used by a low argumentative. This could possibly be done because of the lack of power within the relationship.

Rudd and Burant's studies (1995) continue to support this work, claiming that non-violent couples tend to de-escalate conflicts by ignoring types of negative communications made by their partners.

Infante (1990) claimed that arguments in violent marriages result in the use of more character attacks (e.g. Name calling, insulting personal traits) and arguing about personal ablilities, genrally the arguments are more personal and hurtful. Whereas happily married couples are more likely to resolve disputes without verbal aggression.

With reference to bruce dorval's study of same sex interaction, he found that males tend to change the topic of conversation more frequently than women, this could possibly be applied to the argument theory meaning that men tend to veer off subject to other, non-relevant topics, to attack the personality of the other person(s) involved.

To conclude it is suggested that infrequent 'bickering' within a relationship is not unusual, however when these arguments progress into more hurtful, personal attacks or even physical outbursts of violence, it is unhealthy.

 

 Rhiann Tytherleigh