The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  To make recommendations for improving the situation in Northern Ireland, Shapiro (2012) in his case study of the conflict in Northern Ireland, indicates that the problems still exist in fully implementing the argument. He employs his relational identity theory (RIT), which emphasizes the importance of achieving social-emotional relationships between the conflicting parties that incorporates two main value affiliations: building positive, cooperative relations with one another at both the personal and collective levels, and autonomy, which means respecting the other, including the other’s right to have existential equality to one’s own identity, to be independent, and to have freedom. Shapiro’s important point that the successful implementation of an agreement depends not only on the quality of the substantive agreement but also on the social-emotional relationship developed between the parties making the agreement.

  SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT CONFLICT

  Conflicts such as these three suggest many questions pertinent to conflicts of all sorts—interpersonal, intergroup, and international. These questions relate to fundamental processes that have been studied extensively by social psychologists. The chapters in this book address many of the fundamental social psychological processes involved in conflict and develop the implications of these processes for understanding conflict and for managing conflicts more effectively. Here is an outline of some of the processes affecting conflict that are addressed in one or more chapters.

  Cooperation-competition. Each of the conflicts I have described had a destructive phase characterized by a win-lose or competitive orientation to the conflict. What determines whether a conflict takes a destructive, win-lose course or a constructive, cooperative, problem-solving one?

  Social justice. All of the parties in the three conflicts had initially differing conceptions of what would be a fair resolution. What are the important sources of perceived injustice?

  Motivation. What needs do the parties in conflict have? Are their needs the same as their positions? What motives foster conflict, and which are fostered by conflict and tend to perpetuate it? Which facilitate constructive conflict resolution?

  Trust. Distrust is common whenever a conflict takes a destructive course. What processes give rise to trust, and which give rise to distrust?

  Communication. Faulty communication engenders misunderstanding, which may lead to conflict, and conflict often leads to a breakdown of communication. What are the characteristics of effective communication in terms of the communicator and the listener? What can be done to develop such communication?

  Language. What role does language use play in affecting the course of conflict? Do metaphors, images, and words relating to war (e.g., battle, struggle, fight, coercion, defeat, enemy, suspicion) dominate the discourse and competition relating to conflict, or does the language use reflect terms related to cooperation and peace (e.g., constructive controversy, problem solving, creativity, mutual enlightenment, persuasion, trust)?

  Attribution processes. Our emotional responses toward the actions of another are very much influenced by what intentions we attribute to the other, as well as how much responsibility for the actions we attribute to that person. What are the nature and consequences of common errors in attribution?

  Emotions. What emotions make a constructive conflict resolution less or more likely? What gives rise to these emotions? How can one control one’s destructive emotions during a conflict?

  Persuasion. In most negotiations and conflicts, much of each party’s effort is channeled into attempting to persuade the other of the soundness of the former’s position. What insights into the conditions resulting in effective persuasion have resulted from systematic research of the processes involved in persuasion?

  Self-control. Effective goal-directed actions, particularly those that have to be sustained over a period of time, require effective self-control. During the course of conflict, various distractions, unexpected events, and emotions (such as rage, wounded pride, despair, anxiety) may, when uncontrolled, lead one to lose sight of one’s important, enduring needs and goals. Knowing how to keep oneself on course during a conflict is obviously valuable. What help does theory provide?

  Power. The distribution of power among parties in conflict and how power is employed strongly influence conflict processes. How do the bases of each party’s power (including economic resources, weapons, information, legitimate authority, effective social organization) determine the type of influence exerted during a conflict?

  Violence. When conflict takes a destructive course, it sometimes leads to violence. What factors contribute to violent behavior? What sorts of intervention reduces the likelihood of violence?

  Judgmental biases. A host of misunderstandings, misperceptions, and potential biases interfere with the ability to resolve a conflict constructively. What gives rise to misunderstandings and biases, and how can their occurrence be reduced?

  Personality. How do unresolved self-conflict and individual personality characteristics affect how conflict is managed? How important is it to know the conflictual styles of various types of people (anxious, obsessive, analytical, and so on)?

  Development. What differences typically exist in managing conflict depending on whether it is between children, adolescents, or adults? How does psychological development (such as acquisition of language, increase in physical strength, and decreasing dependence on adults) affect response to conflict?

  Group problem solving and creativity. Constructive management of conflict can be viewed as a creative, cooperative problem-solving process in which the conflict is defined as the mutual problem to be solved. What leads to effective group problem solving, and what enables individuals to be creative in their approach to nonroutine problems?

  Intergroup conflict. Conflict between groups that differ in ethnicity, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, and the like appear to have become prevalent and salient in recent years. How do the processes involved in intergroup conflicts differ from those in interpersonal conflicts?

  Moral conflict. Conflict over basic values (for example, “pro-choice” versus “pro-life”), which are often experienced as moral conflict, are often difficult to resolve. Why are they so difficult to resolve, and what approaches have been developed to manage such conflicts constructively?

  Religious conflict. Despite the fact that the major religions of the world share many values, religious differences have given rise to many destructive conflicts. Why? It is also evident that religious leaders have often been instrumental in preventing deadly conflict. How can leaders of the different religions be encouraged and helped to foster more cooperative relations among the different religions and more constructive conflict resolution within their own communities?

  Family and gender conflict. Some of the most destructive interpersonal conflicts occur within families and between genders, between spouses, and between parents and children. What are the conflicts about, why are they so emotionally intense, and how can the participants learn to manage their conflicts constructively?

  Organizational conflicts. Most of us spend a considerable portion of our lives in organizations: as students in schools, as workers in economic organizations, as citizens in community organizations, and so on. We experience interpersonal conflicts with peers, subordinates, or superordinates; intergroup conflicts with other groups within our organizations; and interorganizational conflicts with other organizations. How are such conflicts managed constructively?

  Culture. How does the culture in which an individual or group is embedded affect how conflicts develop and are managed? What problems do negotiators from diverse cultural backgrounds face?

  Intractable conflicts. Difficult, long-standing, intractable conflicts occur at all levels—interpersonal, intergroup, and international. When are such conflicts “ripe” for intervention? What methods of intervention are likely to be productive? How can reconciliation and forgiveness be encouraged between historically bitter enemies?

  Mediation. Third-party interventi
on, such as mediation, can sometimes help people resolve their conflicts when they are unable to do so by themselves. When is mediation likely to be effective? What are the processes involved in mediation?

  Managing conflict in large groups. When the conflict occurs among factions within a large group, are there ways of bringing the total group, or its relevant components, together so that the group as a whole can contribute to resolving the conflict?

  Constructive controversy. Conflict can take the form of lively, constructive controversy, which stimulates creativity and richer thought processes; yet differences in belief and opinion often produce quarrels that lead to hardening of positions and breakdown of relations. What leads to lively controversy rather than deadly quarrel?

  Culture and conflict. Is conflict theory, largely developed in Western culture, applicable elsewhere? Can it be usefully applied in China, for example? What modifications, if any, are necessary for other cultures?

  Teaching the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of constructive conflict. What are the methods employed by some of the most experienced educators (practitioners and trainers to help students acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of constructive conflict resolution)?

  Research. The field of conflict resolution is relatively young. There is still much basic research needed to acquire fundamental knowledge about all of the issues mentioned in this list. What are the most important and urgent questions to investigate? Also, there are many practitioners doing training and intervening in relation to many different kinds of conflicts. There is much need for research that helps us to know what kinds of intervention or training, with what kinds of clients, in what sorts of circumstances, produce what types of effects.

  These and other questions relevant to all sorts of conflict are addressed in one or more of the chapters of this Handbook—sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly by articulating the fundamental social psychological processes that occur in all sorts of conflict.

  SOME DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ORIENTATION OF THEORISTS AND PRACTITIONERS

  Inevitable differences in theory and practice orientations can lead to misunderstanding and alienation if these inherent differences are not understood. In many disciplines of the natural as well as social sciences, the “scientist” and the “practitioner” tend to stereotype each other: the scientist viewing the practitioner as “unscientific” and the practitioner considering the scientist to be “impractical.” In the hope of fostering mutual respect and understanding of each other’s orientation, the following sections contrast several aspects of each orientation.

  Analytical versus the Synthetic Approach

  The practitioner must synthesize the knowledge from many theories and research studies; she must make a collage or mosaic of many theoretical ideas of the kind presented in this book rather than relying on any single one. In contrast, the theorist-researcher generates knowledge by analysis and isolation of the object of inquiry; the focus is often narrowly defined. Breadth of theoretical knowledge is more important for the practitioner than precision, consistency, or elegance, although the opposite is true for the theoretically oriented researcher. Moreover, because there are no well-established procedures for combining theories to fit them to a given practical problem, practitioners must often work intuitively without being able to specify precisely how they are weaving together the theoretical ideas they are using. In contrast, the pressure on theorist-researchers is to be explicit and specific about their ideas and procedures.

  Skeptical versus Pragmatic

  The practitioner is rewarded if what he does “works” even if his practice is not grounded in well-established knowledge. Moreover, he is usually more persuasive and effective if he has a positive, confident attitude about what he is doing and recommending. The scientist knows very well that the path of progress in science is littered with discarded theories and honor goes to those who help to determine the well-established ones. Thus, it is no wonder that the professional stance of the theorist-researcher is hesitant, self-critical, and skeptical toward the theory and research that social technologists often use with a confident attitude.

  Enduring versus Useful Truths

  The theorist has the (rarely achieved) aim of developing knowledge that is universally true, enduringly valid for different times and places, and relevant for understanding cave people as well as astronauts, aborigines in Kakadu as well as Park Avenue sophisticates. Such theoretical knowledge is usually general and abstract, and developing its implications for specific situations requires considerable additional thought and effort. The scientist is especially interested in developing the surprising and thus interesting implications of a theory because its validity and generality seem enhanced by the ability to predict the unexpected.

  In contrast, the practitioner is necessarily concerned with the mundane and practical, namely, with those aspects of a specific situation that can be altered with minimum cost to produce the desired consequence. Her interest is more focused on the here-and-now, on the concrete aspects of the situation in which she has to work, rather than on the general and abstract. Of course, the practitioner also seeks to have general knowledge of the kind of situation and type of people with whom her model of intervention is effective, but the focus of attention is on what can be done to produce the desired effects. In practical work, it is more important to know that a child’s ability to learn may be improved more easily and economically by changing motivation rather than by modifying genes, even though the child’s genes may play an important role in determining ability to learn.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIZING ABOUT CONFLICT

  This section of the introduction is an overview of the progress made during the past one hundred years or so in the social psychological study of conflict. The writings of three intellectual giants—Darwin, Marx, and Freud—dominated the intellectual atmosphere during social psychology’s infancy. These three theorists significantly influenced the writings of the early social psychologists on conflict as well as in many other areas. All three appeared, on a superficial reading, to emphasize the competitive, destructive aspects of conflict.

  Darwin stressed “the competitive struggle for existence” and “the survival of the fittest.” He wrote that “all nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature. Seeing the contented face of nature, this may at first be well doubted; but reflection will inevitably prove it is too true” (quoted in Hyman, 1966, p. 29).

  Marx emphasized class struggle, and as the struggle proceeds, “the whole society breaks up more and more into two great hostile camps, two great, directly antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat.” He and Engels end their Communist Manifesto with a ringing call to class struggle: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of all countries, unite.”

  Freud’s view of psychosexual development was largely that of constant struggle between the biologically rooted infantile id and the socially determined, internalized parental surrogate, the superego. As Schachtel (1959) has noted, “The concepts and language used by Freud to describe the great metamorphosis from life in the womb to life in the world abound with images of war, coercion, reluctant compromise, unwelcome necessity, imposed sacrifices, uneasy truce under pressure, enforced detours and roundabout ways to return to the original peaceful state of absence of consciousness and stimulation” (p. 10).

  Thus, the intellectual atmosphere prevalent during the period when social psychology began to emerge contributed to viewing conflict from the perspective of “competitive struggle.” Social conditions too—the intense competition among businesses and among nations, the devastation of World War I, the economic depression of the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of Nazism and other totalitarian systems—reinforced this perspective.

  The vulgarization of Darwin’s ideas in the form of “social Darwinism” provided an intellectual rationale for racism, sexism, class superiority, and war. Such ideas as “s
urvival of the fittest, “hereditary determinism,” and “stages of evolution” were eagerly misapplied to the relations between human social groups—classes and nations, as well as social races—to rationalize imperialist policies. The influence of pseudo-evolutionary thinking was so strong that as a critic suggested, it gave rise to a new imperialist beatitude: “Blessed are the strong, for they shall prey upon the weak” (Banton, 1967, p. 48). The rich and powerful were biologically superior; they had achieved their positions as a result of natural selection. It would be against nature to interfere with the inequality and suffering of the poor and weak.

  Social Darwinism and the mode of explaining behavior in terms of innate, evolutionary, derived instincts were in retreat by the mid-1920s. The prestige of the empirical methods in the physical sciences, the point of view of social determinism advanced by Karl Marx and various sociological theorists, and the findings of cultural anthropologists all contributed to their decline. With the waning of the instinctual mode of explaining such conflict phenomena as war, intergroup hostility, and human exploitation, two others have become dominant: the psychological and the social-political-economic.

  The psychological mode attempts to explain such phenomena in terms of “what goes on in the minds of men” (Klineberg, 1964) or “tensions that cause war” (Cantril, 1950). In other words, it explains such phenomena in terms of the perceptions, beliefs, values, ideology, motivations, and other psychological states and characteristics that individual men and women have acquired as a result of their experiences and as these characteristics are activated by the particular situation and role in which people are situated. The social-political-economic mode, by contrast, seeks an explanation in terms of such social, economic, and political factors as levels of armament, objective conflicts between economic and political interests, and the like.