Conflict & Motivation to Control:

" “When someone argues with you, it’s often about gaining control — over the situation, or even over you.”

Elaboration:

• Many arguments aren’t just about the surface issue (like chores, timing, money). Beneath that, there’s often a struggle about who sets the rules.

• By arguing, a person can try to assert their influence, push their perspective through, or make you adapt to their needs.

• Sometimes this is conscious (“I want to be in charge”), but often it’s unconscious — people argue harder when they feel they’re losing control.

• Control provides safety, predictability, and reassurance. That’s why the fight isn’t only about the topic itself, but about who holds the steering wheel.

In short: conflict often doubles as a contest for control, even if it looks like it’s about something trivial."

-----

Also see:

David C. Geary:

"There is general consensus among clinical and research psychologists that humans have a basic motivation to achieve some level of control over relationships, events, and resources of significance in their lives ... a motivation to control will necessarily evolve if the associated behavioral biases contribute to the ability to achieve access to and control of resources that tend to covary with survival and reproductive outcomes and if individual differences in the motivational tendency are heritable.  ... human motivation to control is indeed an evolved disposition and is implicitly focused in attempts to control social relationships and the behavior of other people and to control the biological and physical resources that covary with survival and reproductive prospects in the local ecology. ... Other people are resources if they have reproductive potential (e.g., young females), social power, or access (e.g., through monetary wealth) to the biological and physical resources that covary with the well-being and status in the culture. The goal of developing a relationship with an individual who has social power and wealth is fundamentally an attempt to influence the behavior of this individual and through this to achieve access to power and wealth. In most contexts and for most people, the motivation to control is constrained by formal laws, informal social mores (enforced, e.g., through gossip), and affective mechanisms (e.g. guilt) that promote social compromise and reciprocal social relationships. For most people, adherence to these laws and mores provides benefits that are sufficient to avoid the risks associated with attempts to achieve, for instance, absolute despotic control. Still, consideration of history's despots allows a peeling away of these constraints and a more direct glimpse at the motivation to control. By definition, despots are individuals who have considerable social power and whose behavior is not typically constrained by affective or social consequences; they are also likely to differ from other people in terms of empathy for others, and in terms of the intensity of their need for social dominance."