Interpersonal task- and relationship-focused conflicts. How they are dealt with, and the relationship of conflict management with empathy.

The study - partially supported by CARIPARO foundation - focuses on interpersonal conflicts - often distressing. People(N 492) narrated personal conflict events (E) following prompt questions - e.g., what happened, with whom, why, how E ended,whether protagonist P talked about E with others, reflected on E, and whether sharing or reflecting changed the appraisal of E.Participants also judged the adequacy of behavioral responses to work-setting events depicting interpersonal problematic situations -e.g., your boss tells you the work you did is bad and you need to redo it. The results obtained from content analysing the narratives showed that the majority of conflicts, both task- and relationship-focused, involving work-related and personal-life domains, were not solved when they happened, or ended with pseudo solutions - e.g., silence 27%, fictitious solution 41%); 12% led to a relationshipbreak. Although most people shared E, to vent emotions (67%) or get someone else's perspective (33%), only a minority changedtheir evalutation of E. Likewise, most people thought back on E after it ended (93%), but not all modified their evalutation - if they did, it was for a variety of reasons, such as, because P empathised with the opponent, or saw its own behaviour as inadequate. Finally, E was talked about later on mostly with one's own partner, with friends, and with family. Factor analyses of the behavioral responsesto the work scenarios showed that an empathy dimension characterized those responses that displayed emotional intelligence. The analysis of the relationship between conflict-variables and empathy-level showed that several aspects of how people deal with conflict events were significantly influenced by empathy-level. In sum, the study confirms the psychological complexity of conflict management, both at work and in personal lives, and shows that emotional competence is an important individual feature in howconflicts are handled. The study also shows that our understanding of causes and effects of emotion-loaded events, e.g. conflicts,might be crucially aided by employing a qualitative method -narrative production and analysis - which then can be used together withmore traditional assessment methods to arrive at a greater understanding of psychological issues.