Conflict Avoiders and Introverts
Introverts are much more likely than extroverts to prefer avoiding conflict. This tendency sometimes fits the situation and sometimes doesn’t.
When I was a teenager, I saw the movie, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” – and wished I hadn’t. On screen, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton played an academic couple engaged in a vicious, prolonged emotional duel, full of shouted accusations, profane insults and targeted fury. To me, having grown up in a home where adults never raised their voices against each other, this seemed like an astounding and alien way to interact. Far better, I felt, to hold in angry thoughts and either just let them dissipate or wait until points could be discussed in a civilized fashion.
Undoubtedly the shock I felt came partly from my never before having seen the kind of verbal explosions that filled the film. According to recent research, however, conflict behavior and feelings about conflict also have a significant personality dimension. As an introvert, I was less likely to find a stormy couple exciting, exhilarating or reflective of my own impulses.
In late 2022, the Myers-Briggs Company released results of a study that included more than 50,000 respondents exploring connections between personality type and preferred method of handling conflict. On the one hand, the researchers considered the 16 different Myers-Briggs personality types – half of them introverted and half extroverted – and on the other hand, they looked at five conflict modes: Competing, Collaborating, Compromising, Accommodating and Avoiding.
For every one of the introvert personality types, Avoiding was the first or second most-used mode of handling conflict. In contrast, none of the extrovert personality types indicated Avoiding as the most-preferred conflict mode. Overall, introverts were almost three times more likely than extroverts to have Avoiding as their first- or second-most conflict mode. The study also noted that 18 percent of the introverted respondents found conflict discouraging or demotivating, but only 7 percent of extroverts felt that way.
What accounts for these disparities?
Unfortunately, none of the posts on the study in question that I could find included a definition of what counts as conflict avoidance. They did note that the Avoiding style is both unassertive and uncooperative, with a result that neither party gets their needs met. Probably Avoiding means shying away from situations of direct confrontation. If someone challenges them in a hostile manner, conflict avoiders prefer not to respond in kind – and they may try not to respond at all. Furthermore, conflict avoiders prefer not to initiate head-on disagreements and may attempt to evade relationships that include them.
According to the Myers-Briggs commentators, the personality connection stems from introverts needing time to know what we think. We therefore dislike pressure to respond on the spot. Rather than engage right away, we try to engineer a delay, which fits with the conflict avoider pattern and can prove helpful to an introvert dealing with a conflict or challenge. I can remember several times negotiating with a client on the phone and needing to hang up before I could make a decision. Often mere moments after hanging up, I knew what I should do. But the disconnection, even as brief as it was, was necessary for my decision. Note, however, that someone who delays a response in a conflict situation can be firm, assertive and unmovable when they do come back to the issue. So would the latter count as conflict avoidance? From what I could learn, it’s not so clear.
The Myers-Briggs post also observed that “the way Western culture prefers to deal with conflict is in an extroverted way” – with the heat ramped up, which often causes an introvert to feel overstimulated. Unless we’re angry enough to lose control, that’s another reason why an introvert’s instinct during an in-the-moment conflict is to create some sort of time-out and to withdraw physically or psychologically before the next move.
Again, if the introvert deploys a strategy of turning down the heat temporarily but re-engages later, should we call this conflict avoidance? The person might prefer not to have these sorts of interactions but will steel themselves to do so if they believe it’s necessary. For instance, I strongly dislike voicing an unpopular opinion at public meetings, but if the matter is important enough to me, I will do it anyway, despite the unpleasantness. Behavior doesn’t always coincide with preferences, and I wish this fascinating research report had been clearer on this point as well.
Although a style of ducking conflict might sound like a bad habit of letting problems remain unresolved, the Myers-Briggs researchers contended that sometimes that the avoidance strategy benefits those involved and sometimes it does not. Letting trivial conflicts simply blow over might be very wise in certain situations. Delaying more serious conflicts while people cool down a bit might also be wise. However, this move can also come off as passive aggressiveness and fuel more anger on the other side. Silence, withdrawal or delay can also allow problems to compound unproductively.