Gender-studies scholars describe the ways relationships within the family influence the gender identity of males and females, while composition specialists study the social nature of writing. In the areas of self-disclosure, control, trust, perceptions ofgroup and ofconflict, congruence, and reward, these gender roles affect the abilities of men and women to collaborate successfully and determine their responses to interpersonal conflict. Through classroom activities and journal keeping, students can learn the limits ofgender roles and have access to a full range of collaborative strategies. Certainly the collaborative process, in which teams of writers, editors, technologists, and graphics specialists cooperate to produce a common document, will be important to scholars and educators in technical communication in the 1980s and '90s. While industry has relied on the collaborative process for decades, now researchersthrough pedagogical, theoretical, and empirical studies-attempt to describe and teach that process. (See, for example, collaborativewriting trends as reported by Faigley and Miller; Anderson; Allen, et al.)Most collaborators acknowledge that along with collaboration comes conflict. Substantive conflict, or open debate over ideas, can often lead collaborators to find the best solution and avoid &dquo;groupthink.&dquo; Groupthink, as defined by Bergen and Kirk, is a process &dquo;characterized by a marked decrease in the exchange of potentially conflicting data and by an unwillingness to conscientiously examine such data when they surface&dquo; (217). When collaborators discuss critically all possible approaches to a problem, they often find the best solution. Positive aspects of conflict include the stimulation of creative thinking, consideration of new approaches, open consideration of long-standing practices and problems, clarification of viewpoints, and heightened interest (Fisher 282). More specifically, conflict over substantive issues may include &dquo;disagreements over policies and practices, competitive bids for the same resources and differing conceptions of roles and role relationships&dquo; (Walton 73).However useful substantive conflict, or debate over ideas, may be, collaborators are often distressed by another aspect of conflict: interpersonal conflict, or dislike of another's personal style of communicating. Some scholars such as Walton label this aspect &dquo;emotional&dquo; as opposed to substantive and identify within interpersonal conflict such negative feelings as &dquo;anger, distrust, scorn, resentment, fear,
