Control, Control And More Control

Michelle Han

Paul Grobstein

Web Paper # 3

May 13, 2010

            Research has shown that control is an important aspect in relationships. Control can be understood as a compensatory process where people are most likely to control their partners when control over their environment is challenged, When low mastery, low trust, or high conflict occurs in relationships, individuals feel the need to control their partners to compensate for their perceived lack of control. In order to better understand intimate relationships we need to examine processes such as commitment, love, conflict, and power.

            In the article Control In Relationships, Stets argues that control was more likely to occur when an individual’s ability to take the view of one’s partner(perspective taking) was low and when conflict was high and that low perspective taking and high conflict produce the feeling that one lacks control over the environment. In order to compensate for this lack of control, individuals feel the need to control their partner.

            Previous research has shown that control over the environment is important to human functioning: people are motivated to manipulate their environment, to be masters of their own fate, and to control the events in their lives. In contrast, alienation, depression, or the action of controlling another occurs to compensate for the lack of control. Thus control, over others is a fundamental process in interaction. Compensation has been used to explain how cognitive dissonance is reduced(Festinger, 1957), how the self is successfully presented to others(Baumesiter & Jones, 1978), how a positive self-image is maintained(Steele, 1988; Tesser, 1988), how goals are achieved (Wicklund & Gollwitzer, 1982), and how the self is verified(Swann, 1983).

            There are different explanations for individuals’ reactions when they perceive a threat to their sense of mastery-when a threat to the self occurs. According to dissonance theory, for example, when individuals are faced with a decision, they often experience psychological tension-a threat to their well being(due to the battle between their chosen action and other “attractive options”)-and must resolve this distress through the compensatory cognitive action of emphasizing the importance of one’s choice and demeaning alternatives.

            In the self-presentation research, we find that when people receive negative evaluations from others of their performance, they will compensate by making adjustments to that performance. They strive to present themselves in a favorable light and work on maintaining a positive self-image, through self-affirmation (Stelle 1988). In self-evaluation, people compare themselves with others. When the resulting self-evaluation is negative, people compensate by disassociating with more competent others or by reducing investment in the self-defining performance that served as the basis for the comparison. In self-affirmation, people act to affirm who they see themselves to be. According to the theory self-verification, when people are given contradictory information about themselves, they will compensate by working even harder to prove that they are the people they claim to be (Stets & Burke, 1994; Swann & Hill, 1982).

            The results of Stets research shows that control over one’s partner is more likely to occur in more serious relationships, particularly among college students. The more important a relationship, the more on will try to maintain it, and the more one will be vigilant toward threats to it such as competing goals. If one’s identity is closely tied to a serious relationship, then a threat to this relationship is perceived as a threat to one’s self-view and it generates a feeling of lose of control over the environment. In response, the individual can be expected to exert control over the partner to regain some control. Moreover, more serious relationships should also influence control over the partner indirectly, through relationship conflict. In more serious relationships, people are more likely to discuss personal values,, beliefs, and attitudes. Because individuals may not hold the same values or beliefs, conflict will occur; thus leading to greater control over the partner.

 Moreover trust, the confident expectation of positive outcomes from others-involves being dependent upon another and giving control to the other, also directly and indirectly decreases control over one’s partner. Researchers have hypothesized that people enter relationships with a tendency to either trust or distrust others(Holes & Rempel, 1989). While trust can be expected to generate close, interdependent relationships, distrust will foster less close and more anxiety-ridden relationships. In fact, distrust can be expected to generate relationship conflict given the greater probability of arousing feelings of jealousy and rigid behavior. Thus mastery-a feeling of control or competence in dealing with the world (Bandora 1985; Gecas, 1989; Pearlin et al, 1981) should negatively influence control over one’s partner. When people feel incompetent, they are experiencing a lack of control over their world, and they may regain perceived control over their environment by controlling their partner. However, like the other factors, mastery may, directly and indirectly influece control through trust, perspective taking, the stage of the relationships, and conflict.

A feeling of mastery should lead to greater trust because competent people may determine that they have much to gain from the benevolent actions of another, and they can cope with the possible costs (e.g., exploitation) incurred by trusting another. Those who feel incompetent may lack the confidence to cope should trust lead to costly outcomes. This may reduce feelings of trust, and reduced trust leads to control over the partner. Mastery should also increase perspective taking. While high mastery can be expected to facilitate an openness to another’s views, low mastery should foster a focus on one’s own needs for control rather than on the other’s needs. In turn, low perspective taking should lead to efforts to control the partner.

This research has examined perceptions of control; future work should also examine the behavioral manifestations of control in interaction. For example, people who control may engage frequently in "negative" strategies such as repeatedly challenging or critiquing the other. However, future research could focus on whether couples who have a similar level of control between partners differ in how they interact from couples who have different levels of control between partners(Fitzpatrick,1988). Further research is also need to determine whether one’s level of control varies over the life cycle, across situations, and with different people. Further research should focus on the relationship between gender and control. It is not just whether men and women control at the same level, but also whether their strategies for control take different forms.

            Continuing this research is important for the understanding of relationships because, in attempting to ward off one threat, that is, the threat of reduced control over one’s environment, the individual’s response of controlling the partner may unwittingly generate another threat-the potential loss of the relationship.

References:

Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognition

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Baumeister, R. F., & Jones,E . E. (1978). Whens elf-presentationis constrainedb y the

target'sk nowledge: Consistencya nd compensation. Journalo f Personality and SocialP sychology,3 6, 608-618

Steele, C. M. (1988). The psychology of self-affir-mation: Sustaining the integrity of

the self. In

Stets, J. E. (1992). Interactive processes in dating ag-gression: A national study.

Journal of Marriage and the Family, 54, 165-177.

Swann, W. B., Jr. (1983). Self-verification: Bringing social reality into harmony with

the self. In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Ed.), Psychological perspectives on the self (pp. 33-66). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.