ive explanation of human behaviour (Grusec, 1992). Various theories of human development often tend to view people as either active or passive in interactions with their environments (Cohen, 1987). A passive concept of human development emphasizes the critical significance of one's environment to the overall development of the individual. Active concepts of human development, by contrast with passive concepts, hold that individuals are not passive beings, but, rather, are capable of actively governing their own development.
Miller (1991) found that society often scripts women for passive roles and men for dominant roles in interpersonal conflict situations through a process described by gender role theory. Buunk (1990) found that even when individuals involved in interpersonal conflict situations are not controlled by societal scripting that the one party in the conflict situation often assumes that such societal scripting is present in the other party. Peterson and Peterson (1990) found that such perceptions a
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