Argumentativeness and Hurtful Message Type: Their Relationship with Confrontation and Pressure to End Conflicts

Romantic partners sometimes say hurtful things to each other. After being hurt, individuals vary with regard to whether they confront their partners. This study investigated how argumentativeness and hurtful message type interact to influence whether a confrontation would take place. This study hypothesized that argumentativeness would be positively related to confronting the hurtful message and negatively related to pressure to end the confrontation, and this relationship would be stronger after an insult than a tease. Undergraduate daters were randomly assigned to indicate how they would respond to being teased or insulted by their partners. Argumentativeness was positively related to willingness to confront the partner, but no evidence was found that this relationship was moderated by hurtful message type. However, it was confirmed that the hypothesized interaction was related to pressure to end the conflict. This article discusses the implications of these findings for understanding and investigating hurtful messages, argumentativeness, and confrontations.