Interpersonal assertiveness: Inside the balancing act

Abstract

Whether in everyday disagreements, bargaining episodes, or highstakes disputes, people typically see a spectrum of possible responses to dealing with differences with others, ranging from avoidance and accommodation to competition and aggression. We believe people judge their own and others' behaviors along this dimension, which we call interpersonal assertiveness, reflecting the degree to which someone stands up and speaks out for their own positions when they are faced with someone else who does not want the same outcomes. In this article, we review long-standing and recent scholarship to characterize the curvilinear consequences of assertiveness (both "too little" and "too much" can be problematic). We consider the sources of accommodating and assertive behavior, such as motivations, expectancies, and failures of self-regulation. We also examine ways in which people can assert themselves effectively, ranging from making precise offers in negotiations to employing rationales as part of their proposals. We conclude by noting promising directions for future research. | INTRODUCTIONCountless times each day, most of us are reminded that the people around us do not seek the same outcomes we do.We hope to vacation at the beach, but our families or friends want to head for the mountains. We want to fall asleep, but our neighbors hope their loud party lasts deep into the night. We seek a raise, a promotion, or a budget increase, but our colleagues and bosses have other plans. Because the people around us do not always want what we do, we repeatedly face a basic question of social life: How hard, and how, should we push to get our way? We can press forcefully for our ideal outcomes and resist giving in. We can consider creative solutions or cede selected ground.We can capitulate entirely or even duck and run. Answers to the question of "How hard should I push" vary in a variety of ways, but our focus here is on the dimension we call interpersonal assertiveness, the degree to which people speak out and stand up for their own interests when they are not perfectly aligned with others'. We take a folk psychological approach to this construct, believing that both actors and observers tend to agree in placing behavioralThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.

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“…(Alberti & Emmons, 2002). Individu yang kurang asertif memiliki kecenderungan menjadi kurang percaya diri saat berada di depan umum (Ames, Lee & Wazlawek, 2017;Fox & Boulton, 2005).…”

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“…Our use of single-item measures rather than multiitem measures could also be construed as problematic but is not without precedent in related literature (Ames & Wazlawek, 2014;Wanous, Reichers, & Hudy, 1997). A fruitful avenue of research would be to use an intersectional approach to extend the existing literature on self-perceptions versus others' perceptions of assertiveness in negotiations (Ames, Lee, & Wazlawek, 2017;Ames & Wazlawek, 2014) and how people apply stereotypes and shifting standards in rating similar phrasings from different people (Biernat & Manis, 1994). Further exploration of these factors might explain the difference between the patterns of negotiation behavior in our results and the patterns of negotiation outcomes illustrated in the gender and racial wage gap described in the introduction (Institute for Women's Policy Research, 2017).…”