Do you take conflict personally?

People are commonly admonished on both popular and academic literature not to "take conflict personally" or to "focus only on the issues". However, eliminating all emotional response to conflict situations seems to be an unrealistic goal.

The following scale, we call it the Taking Conflict Personally Scale (TCP),was developed to allow you to describe your emotional reactions to participating in conflict situations.We define Taking Conflict Personally as the feeling of being personally engaged in a publishing life event. A person who takes conflict personally feels threatened, anxious, damaged, devalued, and insulted. The TCP Scale measures six different aspects of Taking Conflict Personally. They include :

DIRECT PERSONALISATION	hurt feelings or a negative emotional response to conflict
PERSECUTION FEELINGS	a feeling that the other participant in the conflict has tried to attack or abuse you
STRESS REACTIONS	tension or pressure felt in reaction to engagement in conflict
POSITIVE RELATIONAL OUTCOMES	the belief that conflict can improve a relationship
NEGATIVE RELATIONAL OUTCOMES	the belief that conflict will damage the relationship
LIKE-DISLIKE VALENCE	the extent to which you enjoy arguing.

The TCP Scale can be used by individuals to gauge their rating on the different aspects of conflict. It can also be used by a group of respondents. A supervisor may want to use it with an existing team of co-workers. Research has indicated that teams of people with members who have lower TCP scores on Direct Personalisation, Persecution Feelings, and Stress, and higher scores on Positive Relational Outcomes, are able to deal with the inevitable conflict that arises in the workplace more effectively.