Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory (CRSI)

Abstract

The Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory (CRSI), developed by developmental and family psychologist Larry A. Kurdek, is a widely utilized 16-item psychometric instrument designed to assess individual behavioral modalities and coping strategies deployed during interpersonal disputes, particularly within romantic and marital relationships. Grounded conceptually in behavioral marital interaction paradigms and structural models of interpersonal conflict, the CRSI operationalizes conflict tactics across four distinct, four-item behavioral dimensions: Positive Problem Solving (constructive negotiation and focus on mutual resolution), Conflict Engagement (verbal aggression, emotional dysregulation, and personal attacks), Conflict Withdrawal (stonewalling, emotional distancing, and refusal to communicate), and Compliance (submissive acquiescence, relinquishing personal viewpoints, and passive yielding). Respondents evaluate how frequently they exhibit each behavior during arguments using a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (Never) to 5 (All of the Time). The instrument also features parallel dyadic administration protocols allowing partners to rate both their own conflict behaviors (self-report) and their perception of their partner’s conflict behaviors (partner-report). Across empirical investigations involving heterosexual married, cohabiting, gay male, and lesbian couples, the CRSI has demonstrated robust internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s alphas typically spanning 0.70 to 0.90 across subscales), commendable longitudinal factorial stability, and substantial criterion, convergent, and predictive validities. Notably, high levels of Conflict Engagement and Conflict Withdrawal persistently predict longitudinal decreases in relationship satisfaction and elevated rates of marital dissolution, whereas Positive Problem Solving operates as a systemic protective factor buffering relationship longevity.

Keywords

Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory, CRSI, Larry A. Kurdek, marital conflict, interpersonal communication, conflict engagement, positive problem solving, conflict withdrawal, compliance, dyadic interaction, relationship satisfaction, psychometrics

Authors

The Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory was developed by Larry A. Kurdek, Ph.D. (1951–2009), who served as a distinguished Professor of Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, United States. Dr. Kurdek was a prominent developmental and clinical psychologist renowned for his pioneering, methodologically rigorous empirical inquiries into romantic relationship trajectories, relationship stability, marital dissolution, and the longitudinal dynamics of both heterosexual and same-sex couples (gay and lesbian cohabiting partners). Throughout his career, Dr. Kurdek published extensively in foundational peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Marriage and Family, Journal of Family Psychology, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, and Personal Relationships, establishing foundational benchmarks for modern relationship science.

Purpose

Interpersonal disputes and communication impasses represent normative occurrences within intimate partnerships; however, the specific behavioral strategies that partners deploy to manage discord serve as primary determinants of relationship quality, personal psychological well-being, and marital stability. The primary purpose of the Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory (CRSI) is to provide a brief, psychometrically sound, and easily interpretable measurement tool that measures specific, functionally consequential behavioral strategies during acute conflict episodes.

Historically, observational methods such as the Rapid Marital Interaction Coding System (RMICS) or the Marital Interaction Coding System (MICS) have served as gold-standard indices of dyadic communication. However, laboratory-based behavioral observation is exceptionally labor-intensive, requiring extensive audio-video recording apparatuses, highly trained independent coders, and complex structural interaction modeling, rendering it frequently impractical for large-scale epidemiological investigations, longitudinal surveys, or routine outpatient marital therapy intake protocols. Dr. Kurdek engineered the CRSI to bridge this methodological divide, synthesizing the core construct domains captured in behavioral observation frameworks into a succinct 16-item self-administered format that does not compromise construct validity.

In clinical contexts, such as couple and family therapy, the CRSI functions as an indispensable diagnostic and psychoeducational assessment. Administered during initial screening, the instrument provides clinicians with an objective, quantified profile of both partners’ habitual conflict topologies. It readily identifies pathognomonic behavioral configurations, such as the destructive “demand-withdraw” pattern (wherein one partner demonstrates elevated Conflict Engagement while the other displays marked Conflict Withdrawal) or pervasive asymmetrical compliance, wherein one partner systematically suppresses emotional needs, predisposing the relationship to chronic emotional detachment. In research domains, the CRSI facilitates the longitudinal modeling of romantic outcomes, enabling investigators to examine whether conflict patterns moderate the associations between contextual stressors (e.g., transition to parenthood, financial strain, systemic marginalization) and relational decline.

Psychological Construct

The Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory evaluates four empirically derived behavioral dimensions that capture the spectrum of functional and dysfunctional interpersonal communication during relationship disputes:

1. Positive Problem Solving

Positive Problem Solving represents a constructive, task-focused, collaborative approach to relationship disputes. Rooted in cognitive-behavioral principles of integrative negotiation, this dimension reflects an individual’s ability to sustain emotional regulation, engage in active listening, articulate grievances without hostility, and actively solicit solutions that accommodate both partners’ underlying interests. Rather than seeking unilateral victory or dominance, an individual exhibiting positive problem solving perceives the dispute as a mutual problem demanding shared intellectual and emotional resources. Specific manifestations include remaining anchored to the focal dispute without dredging up historical grievances, seeking acceptable compromise, and affirming mutual relationship commitment amid tension.

2. Conflict Engagement

Conflict Engagement reflects a hyper-activated, emotionally destructive, coercive attack orientation. Far from representing healthy assertiveness, this construct encapsulates uncontrolled affective outbursts, explosive verbal hostility, physical agitation, and the deliberate deployment of personalized insults and character assassinations. Individuals high in conflict engagement prioritize dominating the interaction, asserting righteousness, and humiliating or overpowering their partner. This construct aligns directly with John Gottman’s formulations of Contempt and Criticism, introducing severe psychological toxicity into the dyadic system and triggering reciprocal defensive escalation.

3. Conflict Withdrawal (Self-Protection)

Conflict Withdrawal, conceptually congruent with physiological flooding and behavioral stonewalling, denotes an avoidant, dismissive strategy wherein a partner actively disengages from the communicative transaction. It is characterized by persistent silence, emotional flatlining, psychological shutdown, gaze aversion, tuning out the partner’s speech, and overt behavioral exit from the physical or conversational space. Although frequently adopted by individuals as an acute self-protective mechanism to attenuate overwhelming autonomic nervous system arousal, conflict withdrawal prevents conflict resolution, leaving relational problems unresolved and generating profound feelings of abandonment, distress, and frustration in the pursuing partner.

4. Compliance (Acceptance)

Compliance captures a passive, submissive conflict style characterized by rapid surrender, preemptive appeasement, and the systematic suppression of personal perspectives, needs, and rights. Driven frequently by intense conflict anxiety, fear of partner rejection, or learned helplessness, compliant individuals yield immediately to their partner’s demands without genuine cognitive consensus. While compliance may produce an illusion of superficial calm by abruptly terminating manifest disputes, it represents an unviable long-term relational strategy, as the chronic subordination of personal autonomy systematically breeds covert resentment, marital disaffection, and emotional alienation.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical foundations of the CRSI draw primarily from Behavioral Marital Theory, developed by researchers such as Neil Jacobson and Robert Weiss, alongside the dual-concern and structural conflict models formulated in social psychology by Blake and Mouton, and later Thomas and Kilmann. Behavioral marital models posit that relational stability and emotional satisfaction are direct functions of the ratio of reinforcing versus punishing behaviors exchanged between partners over time. Intimate relationships deteriorate when adverse behavioral exchanges become entrenched in automated, self-reinforcing interactional loops.

Complementing behavioral theory, John Gottman’s Cascade Model of Marital Dissolution provides the physiological and communicative underpinnings for the destructive subscales within the CRSI. Gottman demonstrated that the systematic presence of hostile attack behaviors (Conflict Engagement) and rigid disengagement (Conflict Withdrawal / Stonewalling) triggers chronic physiological diffuse arousal (elevated heart rates, endocrine stress responses), impeding the neural capacity for empathy and higher-order social problem-solving. Kurdek operationalized these critical behavioral markers into psychometric items that measure the core behavioral axes of marital pathology.

Furthermore, the CRSI intersects with Adult Attachment Theory (Bowlby, Ainsworth, Hazan, & Shaver). Attachment-anxious individuals, hypersensitive to perceived threats of abandonment, disproportionately rely on hyper-activating strategies mirrored in high Conflict Engagement or anxious Compliance to solicit connection. Conversely, attachment-avoidant individuals, who minimize emotional vulnerability, predominantly mobilize deactivating strategies characterized by Conflict Withdrawal. Thus, the CRSI operates as an empirical bridge linking internal working models of self and other to overt, observable interactional scripts in couple dynamics.

Validity

The construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validities of the CRSI have been rigorously verified across numerous cross-sectional and multi-wave longitudinal investigations involving diverse dyadic samples.

Construct and Factorial Validity

In his seminal validation investigations, Kurdek (1994, 1995) administered the CRSI across cohorts comprising heterosexual married couples with children, heterosexual married couples without children, gay male cohabiting couples, and lesbian cohabiting couples. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a four-factor orthogonal or modestly intercorrelated structure yielded superior fit across all four relationship types compared to unidimensional or rival two- and three-factor solutions. Invariance testing confirmed that the four behavioral constructs operate with comparable conceptual equivalence across sexual orientations and gender identities.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity

Convergent validity has been established through robust correlations with collateral relationship metrics. Positive Problem Solving exhibits significant positive correlations with relationship satisfaction (measured via the Dyadic Adjustment Scale), mutual self-disclosure, perceived social support, and constructive dyadic coping. In contrast, Conflict Engagement and Conflict Withdrawal correlate positively with generalized psychological distress, relational neuroticism, depressive symptomatology, and demand-withdraw communication indices. Discriminant validity is supported by modest to near-zero correlations with unrelated individual difference metrics, such as social desirability scales, confirming that scores reflect genuine interaction styles rather than mere self-presentation biases.

Predictive and Longitudinal Validity

The CRSI exhibits remarkable predictive power concerning relational trajectories. In a landmark five-year longitudinal study of newly married couples, Kurdek (1995) demonstrated that baseline husband and wife self- and partner-ratings of Conflict Engagement and Conflict Withdrawal uniquely predicted the rate of decline in marital satisfaction over subsequent years, independent of initial satisfaction levels. Couples characterized by escalating Conflict Engagement and reciprocal Withdrawal manifested significantly higher hazards of formal separation and divorce. Conversely, sustained Positive Problem Solving functioned longitudinally as a potent buffer, preserving dyadic stability even in the presence of external demographic and financial stressors.

Reliability

Empirical evaluations of the Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory consistently document robust internal consistency reliability across diverse cultural and socio-demographic populations.

• Conflict Engagement: Cronbach’s alpha estimates consistently range between 0.79 and 0.89 for both self-report and partner-report versions.
• Positive Problem Solving: Cronbach’s alpha estimates routinely fall between 0.78 and 0.88, indicating exemplary item homogeneity.
• Conflict Withdrawal: Alpha coefficients span 0.75 to 0.86, demonstrating reliable measurement of communicative disengagement.
• Compliance: While slightly lower due to the multifaceted nature of submissive tendencies, Cronbach’s alpha values for Compliance remain psychometrically acceptable, typically ranging from 0.70 to 0.81.

Test-retest reliability evaluations over multi-month intervals indicate substantial temporal stability (coefficients ranging from r = 0.65 to 0.82), underscoring that while conflict styles are context-sensitive, individuals exhibit enduring behavioral dispositions in their dispute-resolution approaches over time.

Factor Analysis

The structural composition of the CRSI was originally established via exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing principal axis factoring with varimax and oblimin rotations, subsequently cross-validated using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) across independent dyadic cohorts.

In CFA models, the hypothesized four-factor model (Positive Problem Solving, Conflict Engagement, Conflict Withdrawal, Compliance) consistently demonstrates superior model fit indices across samples. Standard goodness-of-fit metrics frequently observed in published literature satisfy stringent psychometric criteria:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): ≥ 0.93 to 0.96
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): ≥ 0.92 to 0.95
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): ≤ 0.045 to 0.062 (with 90% confidence intervals falling comfortably below 0.08)
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): ≤ 0.050

All 16 manifest indicators load substantially onto their designated latent constructs, with standardized factor loadings uniformly exceeding 0.60 (most items loading between 0.68 and 0.88). Cross-loadings across factors are minimal, demonstrating clean structural differentiation. Correlational analyses among the latent factors reveal that Conflict Engagement and Conflict Withdrawal correlate positively with each other (typically r ≈ 0.40 to 0.55), while both correlate negatively with Positive Problem Solving (r ≈ -0.30 to -0.50), reflecting a coherent, theoretically grounded structural architecture.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory (CRSI)
• Primary Author: Larry A. Kurdek, Ph.D.
• Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire or computerized psychological assessment. May be administered as self-report (assessing one’s own conflict behavior) or partner-report (assessing one’s perception of the partner’s behavior during arguments).
• Item Count: 16 items in total (4 items per subscale).
• Response Scale: 5-point Likert-type scale:
  • 1 = Never
  • 2 = Rarely
  • 3 = Sometimes
  • 4 = Often
  • 5 = All of the Time
• Subscale Breakdown:
  • Conflict Engagement: Items 1, 5, 9, 13
  • Positive Problem Solving: Items 2, 6, 10, 14
  • Conflict Withdrawal (Self-Protection): Items 3, 7, 11, 15
  • Compliance (Acceptance): Items 4, 8, 12, 16
• Scoring Instructions: Subscale scores are obtained by calculating either the sum (ranging from 4 to 20 per subscale) or the arithmetic mean (ranging from 1.0 to 5.0) of the items corresponding to that subscale. There are no reverse-coded items. Higher scores reflect greater frequency of engaging in that specific conflict style during interpersonal arguments.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Conflict Resolution Styles Inventory was formally introduced in peer-reviewed scientific literature in 1994 by Dr. Larry A. Kurdek through his foundational paper published in the Journal of Marriage and Family. As Dr. Kurdek published the complete item set and scale parameters within academic journals for scholarly dissemination, the instrument is widely accessible in the public academic domain for non-commercial research, university-level training, and clinical evaluation purposes without payment of royalty fees. Researchers and clinicians utilizing the instrument are expected to maintain academic attribution and cite Dr. Kurdek’s foundational 1994 and 1995 publications in all resultant reports. Commercial reproduction or inclusion within proprietary software packages typically requires permission from the original copyright holder (the National Council on Family Relations or Dr. Kurdek’s estate).

References

• German, N. M. (2013). Assessment of disharmony and disaffection (Doctoral dissertation). Auburn University. https://etd.auburn.edu/bitstream/handle/10415/3666/Nicole%20German%20thesis.pdf
• Gottman, J. M. (1994). What predicts divorce? The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Henson, R. K. (2001). Understanding internal consistency reliability estimates: A conceptual primer on coefficient alpha. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 34(3), 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481756.2002.12069034
• Kurdek, L. A. (1994). Conflict resolution styles in gay, lesbian, heterosexual nonparent, and heterosexual parent couples. Journal of Marriage and Family, 56(3), 705–722. https://doi.org/10.2307/352879
• Kurdek, L. A. (1995). Predicting changes in marital satisfaction from husbands’ and wives’ conflict resolution styles. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57(1), 153–164. https://doi.org/10.2307/353696
• Kurdek, L. A. (1997). Relation between neuroticism and dimensions of relationship commitment: Evidence from gay, lesbian, and heterosexual couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 11(1), 109–134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0893-3200.11.1.109
• Kurdek, L. A. (1998). Relationship outcomes and their predictors: Longitudinal evidence from heterosexual married, gay cohabiting, and lesbian cohabiting couples. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60(3), 553–568. https://doi.org/10.2307/353528
• Kurdek, L. A. (2007). Avoidance motivation and commitment in heterosexual, gay male, and lesbian partners. Personal Relationships, 14(2), 291–306. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2007.00155.x
• Touliatos, J., Perlmutter, B. F., Straus, M. A., & Holden, G. W. (Eds.). (2001). Handbook of family measurement techniques. SAGE Publications.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)