Family Members as Third Parties in Dyadic Family Conflict: Strategies, Alliances, and Outcomes

Abstract

Systems theorists have argued that triads rather than dyads need to be considered as a basic interaction unit, particularly in regard to episodes of conflict. While theoretically appealing, the description of the strategies used and alliances formed when third parties intervene in dyadic conflict presents a number of conceptual and empirical challenges. In the present report, a reliable system for coding such third-party participation in verbal conflicts is described and is used to analyze routine family conflicts that were observed during dinner. A number of specific findings of interest are reported, including that girls were more likely than boys to intervene in all family disputes except marital conflicts, that mothers and fathers rarely sided against each other when intervening as third parties, and that the third-party strategies most commonly used corresponded with family roles: fathers used authority strategies, mothers used mediational tactics, and children used distraction. Of greater importance, however, are the general findings that document the influence of third parties on dyadic conflict. Additional family members frequently joined dyadic family conflicts, they were about equally likely to attempt to end or to continue the conflict, they formed alliances about half of the time, and their intervention strategies were related to the outcome of the conflict as well as its patterning.