Hard and soft emotion during conflict: Investigating married couples and other relationships

Abstract

Three studies investigated the function of 2 types of negative emotion during interpersonal conflict. Hard emotion includes feeling angry or aggravated. Soft emotion includes feeling sad or hurt. In both Study 1 (including 236 married people) and Study 2 (including 140 college students), participants recalled 3 different previous conflict episodes. In the third study, 77 married couples were observed in 4 different conflict conversations, completed during 2 assessment sessions. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to investigate the extent to which change in emotion predicted corresponding change in behavior and appraisal. Hard emotion predicted increases in negative communication, whereas soft emotion predicted more benign forms of communication. Soft emotion also predicted increases in appraisals that interpersonal conflicts are important to resolve. Copyright © 2007 IARR.