ABSTRACT
In a world of diverse attitudes, opinions, and values, differences between persons over issues both large and small are inevitable. When engaging in a controversial issue, individuals vary in their levels of aggressiveness. Social scientists have taken numerous approaches to the ways in which individuals manage difference and disagreement. One of the problems encountered in social science is that scholars from many disciplines are interested in studying the same processes. Although we may all be interested in the same phenomenon—aggression, for example—we typically are not interested in studying the same elements of the phenomenon. Even when we are interested in the same elements, we may be using very different approaches. For example, psychologists are generally interested in individual cognitive processes and the ways in which they affect individual behavior; clinical psychologists are interested in applying this knowledge therapeutically in helping relationships with persons in distress. Sociologists are generally interested in broad societal patterns of behavior. Communication scholars are generally interested in the processes that unfold when people interact (Nicotera, 1996).
