Arguments, Conflicts, and Decisions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 120

as a side effect (e.g., arguing at a social gathering with one's in-laws may be seen as
a deliberate insult, thus spurring a quarrel unrelated to the original disagreement).
Thus this data confirms that arguers pick their fights carefully — that is, they enter
an argument based on some understanding of how this will affect the range of
intersubjective conflicts faced by both parties.

7.3.2 Argument Editing: Editorial Standards and Styles

Dale Hample and colleagues conceptualize argument editing as a process that occurs
between an initial, private conception of a potential message or move in an argument
and its final public production (or lack thereof). The basic insight is that if, upon
reflection, the initial idea for an argumentative contribution comes to be regarded as
inappropriate or unwise, it may be edited (i.e., properly modified or utterly censored)
to better suit the arguer's goals (for in-depth discussion of this view of editing, see
Hample 2005 ). In a series of empirical studies (e.g., Hample and Dallinger 1990 ,
1992 ; Hample 2006 ; Hample et al. 2009 ), it has been shown that people vary in the
degree to which they bother to edit at all (some arguers are just “blurters,” uttering
whatever comes to mind with no filter), as well as in what standards they use to
reshape their utterances.
Importantly, this individual variation is not random. Hample and collaborators
have identified three basic classes of editorial standards , roughly as follows:

• Effectiveness : the original contribution is edited because it is either expected to

fail or it is considered to be too negative and thus likely to hinder the interaction.

• Person-centered considerations : the contribution is edited because its original

form is considered at risk of being too harmful to either oneself, the other, or the
relationship.

• Discourse competence : the contribution is edited because its first formulation is

considered either false or irrelevant to the matter of discussion.

In turn, whether a person favors one class of standards or another depends on
his/her goals. In empirical studies to date, two main editorial styles have emerged
as dominant among arguers:

• Effectiveness editors : these people represent themselves as willing to say nearly

anything that will work argumentatively, no matter the consequences.

• Person-centered editors : these arguers will not say things that have negative iden-

tity or relational repercussions, even when this leads to deliberately swallowing
potentially effective messages.

Editorial preferences have also been studied in connection with various per-
sonality measures (see Hample 2005 for a summary), such as argumentativeness
(Infante and Rancer 1982 ), verbal aggressiveness (Infante and Wigley 1986 ), and
psychological gender (i.e., masculinity vs. femininity, Bem 1974 ). While none of
these factors is the sole determinant of editorial style, they do have an influence.