Tannen says in her book “If we recognize and understand the differences between us, we can take them into account, adjust to, and learn from each other’s styles.” To fully understand Tannen’s ideas about conversations and about men and women’s conversation styles you have to first fully understand about what causes aggression, because Tannen blames many conversation difficulties on men’s aggression and dominance. In her book, Tannen states “No one could deny that men as a class are dominant in our society,

Tannen feels that men are more aggressive then women. Tannen says in her book that, the conviction that men must act independently, and always find their way without help, is a hindrance to men, for there are times when they do not have all the information needed to make a decision. Furthermore, studies show that women and men who have been successful in the traditionally male fields of business and science are not very competitive. Women’s inclination to seek agreement may even be an advantage in management. Tannen goes on to further say that, though maintaining an atmosphere of community rather than hierarchy may have advantages in some settings, people who are not afraid of conflict have an advantage in innumerable inevitable situations where others try to get their way. The effect of fear is sometimes indistinguishable from the effect of respect.

and that many individual men seek to dominate women in their lives.”

For learning theorists, aggression is simply a behavior and must be governed by the same principle as any other behavior: reinforcement. There are many rewards in our society for aggression. The most obvious rewards for aggression are material ones. Example, if a child sees another child playing with a toy that he wants and the other child is unwilling to share the toy, then through the force of aggression the child can get the toy. There are also social rewards for aggression. Example, making others fear and respect you for what you can do to them. Another reward of aggressive behavior is that it removes an unpleasant state. One very good point that Anne Campbell makes in her book is “For some men the reward for behaving aggressively is a boost to their shaky sense of self-worth, since it is a public demonstration of their manliness, about which they have profound doubts. But behind their bravado is often a deep-seated sense of fear and vulnerability. They know only too well the feeling of powerlessness they seek to create in their victims. As long as they are the aggressors, they cannot be the victim. One instrumental theorist , James Tedeschi, says that aggression is simply coercive power - the use of threats or punishments to gain compliance and to have demands met, whether they be for money, gratification, or other reasons. When we are unable to get our way by charm, ingratiation, or rational argument, according to this theory, we resort to threats: “To be coercive, violence has to be anticipated. And it has to be avoidable by accommodation. The power to hurt is bargaining power.” In Dolf Zillmann’s book Hostility and Aggression he states that since there is such an overwhelming amount of research and books and journal articles on the subject of aggression that many people get the impression that aggression is a well understood phenomenon, but the true is just the opposite of that, there has been a lot of research on aggression but more is still needed, because aggression is not fully understood yet and may never be fully understood ever.

Some topics in this essay:
Anne Campbell, According Tannen, Barbara Johnstone’s, Hostility Aggression, Id Ego, Sigmund Freud, Women Aggression, Conversation Tannen, Thanatos Eros, Woods III, tannen’s ideas, tannen book, anne campbell, pick fight, sigmund freud, agree tannen, conversation women, book tannen, tannen explains, supports tannen’s ideas, people try, theories aggression 1, role conversation women, risk physical injury, attempts push life,