Abstract
Occasionally one finds a reference to decision making within couples or families, but the subject has not been pursued as systematically as, say, power, conflict, self-disclosure, companionship, and other blatantly expressive and emotive aspects of interaction. The nature of intimate relationships suggests this emphasis. Intimate relationships are formed for social and companionate reasons. Decision making is a by-product; something that is necessary to maintain the relationship but not a goal in-and-of itself. In contrast, many task and work relationships are formed basically for the purpose of decision making. Thus, the archetypal setting for the study of communication and collaborative decision making has been the task-oriented small group. One way of clarifying the subject of this chapter is to contrast the much studied task-oriented group with the decision making of couples.
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Sillars, A.L., Kalbflesch, P.J. (1989). Implicit and Explicit Decision-Making Styles in Couples. In: Brinberg, D., Jaccard, J. (eds) Dyadic Decision Making. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-3516-3_8
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