Surprisingly Good Talk: Misunderstanding Others Creates a Barrier to Constructive Confrontation

We report a series of experiments indicating that people's interest in having constructive confrontations is based in part on their expectations of how the people they are confronting will respond, but these expectations are overly pessimistic, meaning people systematically underestimate how positively others will respond when being confronted. In recalled, hypothetical, and actual confrontations between roommates and romantic partners, people in the role of the confronter expected more negative reactions than those who were being confronted imagined, reported, and actually exhibited. Misunderstanding how positively others would respond to an honest conversation about a problematic relationship issue may leave people overly reluctant to have the kinds of difficult conversations that are important for their relationships to thrive.