The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Adam may be such a rejection-sensitive man. As long as Eve merely fades into subservience at his onslaught, no open destructive conflict and no cycles of humiliation occur. An unwise therapist could very well create such cycles if she were to nurture feelings of humiliation in Eve that would lead to nothing but the creation of cycles of humiliation. The therapist needs to lay out a vision for Mandela-like dealings with feelings of humiliation for both Eve and Adam.

  Cycles of humiliation occur when feelings of humiliation are translated into acts of humiliation that are responded to in kind. In cases of collectively perpetrated mayhem, Hitler-like humiliation entrepreneurs “invite” followers to pour their frustrations into grand narratives of humiliation that call for retaliatory acts of humiliation as “remedy.” Massacres typically are not just efficient slaughter; rape, torture, and mutilation, with the aim to humiliate “the enemy,” often precede killing. Only “Mandelas” can avoid this.

  Even the history of the field of psychology itself could be narrated as a story of humiliation. The field began its existence as an underdog (and still is, in many ways). Foregrounding hard science—through quantitative methodologies or the application of the latest technologies—is a path to gaining respect, honor, and dignity in a Western world that is still characterized by a male culture of domination (Lindner, 2010). Emotions, relationships, and qualitative approaches are “soft” and have a taste of the female sphere. Also, listening to indigenous peoples provides little prestige. Currently, it is the arrival of new hard imaging technology that provides prestige to soft emotions. Here we see how psychologists themselves can become victims of traps that are part of their very own field of inquiry—in their wish to avoid being humiliated as “touchy-feely” (to formulate it provocatively), they overlook feelings and relationships, as well as neglecting the wisdom of indigenous peoples.

  To conclude, feelings of humiliation affect conflict in malignant ways when they are translated into violence like Hitler’s or terrorism and set off cycles of humiliation. Yet feelings of humiliation do not automatically trigger violence. There is no rigid link. Feelings of humiliation can also be invested in constructive social change. Paulo Freire’s conscientization depends on feelings of humiliation to unfold. What if Mandela had not been sensitive to the systemic humiliation meted out by apartheid? What if he had meekly bowed to humiliation, or cultivated the “resilience” of denial and apathy? Yets while Mandela used the force entailed in feelings of humiliating to rise up, he did not translate these feelings into violent retaliation. He did not follow the example of Rwanda, where the former underlings killed their former elite in a genocide. Indignez-vous! Cry out! This is the voice of Stéphane Frédéric Hessel in 2010, a French wartime resistance hero, born in 1917. In the 1940s, he cried out against Nazism. Today he calls on people to “cry out against the complicity between politicians and economic and financial powers” and to “defend our democratic rights.” The Occupy movement followed his call.

  Conflict affects feelings of humiliation through the way it is managed. If managed in condescending, patronizing, and arrogant ways, even if this is done unwittingly, feelings of humiliation will undermine constructive cooperation. The essence of “waging good conflict” is that necessary conflict is addressed rather than neglected, and that this is done in dignified ways, without humiliating the humiliators. This insight can be institutionalized at the societal level. In his book The Decent Society, Margalit (1996) calls for institutions that do not humiliate. What is needed today is a decent global society.

  Guilt, and How It Affects Conflict and Is Affected by Conflict

  It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity. Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal. I believe that the horrifying deterioration in the ethical conduct of people today stems from the mechanization and dehumanization of our lives, a disastrous by-product of the scientific and technical mentality. Nostra culpa!

  —Albert Einstein

  Guilt is an elaborated emotion and a topic for psychology, psychiatry, ethics, criminal law, and other related fields. To feel guilty, we need self-awareness and the ability to measure our behavior in relation to standards. Self-conscious evaluative emotions such as pride, shame, or guilt are not possible earlier than the second or third year of life. However, since elaborated emotions are culturally dependent, the concept of guilt might never evolve, at least not in any Western sense; in some cultural spheres, a word for guilt simply does not exist.

  In its simplest description, guilt may be understood as an affective state of regret at having done something one believes one should not have done. Humiliation, humility, shame, and guilt are related concepts. When I feel ashamed, I accept that I fell short. I blush when I break wind inadvertently. I can be ashamed even if nobody notices. Norbert Elias (1897–1990) places the emerging “skill” of feeling shame at such transgressions at the center of his theory of civilization.

  We deem humility to be a virtue, and shame and guilt as hugely important. Shame needs to be acknowledged if bypassed, it can maintain destructive conflict (Scheff and Retzinger, 1991). Particular men in honor contexts may reckon that feeling shame is an unacceptable dishonorable humiliation. Facing guilt and shame can render healing for perpetrators, victims, and larger society through remorse, apology, forgiveness, and restorative justice.

  However, guilt can also be abused. When people are taught to feel guilty for their very existence or for certain characteristics of their appearance, this represents a destructive application of guilt. Deliberately creating pathological guilt to weaken opponents in conflict risks undermining long-term constructive solutions.

  Shame and guilt societies have been differentiated—Ruth Benedict’s name has become connected to this distinction. Chinese scholars, however, explain that shame and guilt shade into each other, both directing people into self-examination in social situations and motivating people to evaluate their behavior and adapt it.

  Eve is kept in timid subservience not least by feeling guilty. She partly believes Adam’s complaint that she ought to be more docile. Indeed, in traditional normative contexts of ranked honor, a woman is expected to efface herself. However, times have changed. Eve is entitled to develop a more comprehensive and expansive personal space—not arrogantly attacking Adam in retaliation but maintaining a spirit of firm and respectful humility. Adam no longer needs to bypass his shame and cover up with violence. He is entitled to feel proud to be a male who supports a strong woman at his side. He may even come to feel guilty and apologize to his wife for not having grasped this insight earlier.

  Confidence and Warmth, and How They Affect Conflict and Are Affected by Conflict

  What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death.

  —Octavio Paz

  The amygdala maintains close connections with the insular cortex, which is more adapted for social behavior and empathy. Frans de Waal (2009) carried out seminal research on empathy, highlighting its anchoring in maternal care. De Waal’s research confirms that Homo sapiens is not just a narrowly self-interested Homo economicus.

  Throughout the past millennia of human history, neighboring groups in a fragmented world were always potential enemies, and war was frequent. What political scientists call the security dilemma was often very strong. The motto “if you want peace, prepare for war,” was inescapable. “Loving your enemy” was unforgivably unpatriotic. Gandhi’s recommendation that “there is no path to peace; peace is the path” had little space to manifest. Men were trained to foreground the human capacity to be aggressive toward hostile out-groups, while women nurtured and maintained the relationships within the in-group. The dominator model of society was ubiquitous, a male-dominant “strong-man” rule, in both the family and polity, with hierarchies of domination maintaine
d by institutionalized and socially accepted violence ranging from wife and child beating to aggressive warfare on the larger tribal or national level (Eisler, 1987).

  At this point in history, former out-groups merge into one single global in-group or “global village” (or, as anthropologists would phrase it, the human tribes are ingathering). This gives the partnership model of society (Eisler, 1987) a window of opportunity to manifest (Lindner, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2012a, 2012b). The traditional female role script for maintaining relationships within an in-group can and must now be projected onto the global level. Both men and women together can collaborate as a global family rather than compete for global enmity. The exploitative and divisive aspects of globalization can be harnessed by a new global culture of care that is intentionally shaped. That human nature is on our side—it is social and cultural—is the hope-inducing message from new research.

  The problem, however, is that coming together in a common in-group (such as a global village) does not automatically create positive feelings. Humans also share a strong tendency to split into in- and out-groups. New closeness may bring not joy but negative feelings, creating whole new fault lines. The contact hypothesis, or the hope that mere contact can foster friendship, is not necessarily true, particularly not when globalization makes the world frightfully “liquid” (Bauman, 2010) or, even worse, when it exposes the humiliation of empty human rights rhetoric.

  Anthropologist Alan Page Fiske (1991) found that people, most of the time and in all cultures, use just four elementary and universal forms or models for organizing most aspects of sociality: (1) communal sharing, (2) authority ranking, (3) equality matching, and (4) market pricing. Family life is often informed by communal sharing. Relationships of trust, love, care, and intimacy can prosper in this context. In my work, I suggest that we need to reinstate communal sharing as the leading frame, globally and locally, since the current primacy given to market pricing eats into our humanity and diminishes it at all levels and in all contexts (Lindner, 2010).

  Allow me to share my personal experience. I was born into a displaced family, into an identity of “here where we are, we are not at home, and there is no home for us to go to.” I have healed the pain of displacement by living as a global citizen for almost forty years (Lindner, 2012b). I am embedded in many cultures on all continents, far beyond the “Western bubble.” I understand that many people feel the world becoming liquid, confusing, and fear inducing. Yet to me, true global living provides the stark opposite: a sense of security, trust, and confidence. After all, our forefathers were continuously surprised by new discoveries, while I have a lived experience of how small a planet Earth is.

  According to my observation, it is not the ingathering process that poses a problem; on the contrary, it represents a historically unparalleled opportunity. The most significant problems flow from our currently reigning economic frames, which are equally unhelpful locally and globally. They offer illusionary solutions, needlessly intensify old conflicts, and hinder the transition to equality in dignity (Lindner, 2012a). Moreover, people confound the negative and positive sides of globalization. As a result, the promise that the in-gathering trend entails is being overlooked by those who have the capabilities and resources to harness and develop it intentionally and leave it open to being misused by others (social media, for instance, covertly instrumentalizing it for profit).

  Sunflower identity is the name I coined for my global unity-in-diversity identity (Lindner, 2012b). Through my global life, its core is more securely anchored in our shared humanity than any human identity ever before had the opportunity to be. My experience indicates that it is psychologically feasible to relate to all human beings as if they are family members and that most people are able to respond in kind. I agree with indigenous psychologist Louise Sundararajan who calls for preserving the relational contexts that our emotions are evolved for, of which a rich source of information is found in many traditional societies.

  At the periphery of my identity (the petals of the sunflower, so to speak), it is profoundly enriching to find safety in learning to swim in the flux of life rather than to cling to illusionary certainties. I join Japanese architect Kisho Kurokawa in his call for a shift from a machine principle to a life principle, not just in architectural designs. Rigidity needs to give way to process and complexity (Lindner, 2009). Social identity complexity can and must be nurtured, even if power elites fear fluidity and complexity (because it makes for disloyal underlings).

  We have to become confident voyagers and not rigid vindicators, according to David Matsumoto, Seung Hee Yoo, and Jeffery LeRoux (2007). When we do not understand our counterpart, jumping to conclusions out of a need to “be sure” will produce failure. Guessing what our spouse (or terrorists) “want” and basing our actions on such speculations simply does not work. We have to learn to stay calm while we use our frustration creatively, with imagination and inspiration.

  Intercultural communication scholar Muneo Yoshikawa (1987) has developed a double-swing model that conceptualizes how individuals, cultures, and intercultural concepts can meet in constructive ways. Double-swing pendulation—from you to me, back to you, back to me, and so on—has to be conducted with warmth and respect for all conflict parties. Respect and warmth are the glue that keeps people together while they move back and forth.

  From Michel Serres to Kwame Anthony Appiah to Emmanuel Lévinas, all advocate métissage, or intermingling, meaning that both I and the Other are changed when we meet. I suggest harvesting those elements from all world cultures that foster relationships of loving mutuality and respect for equality in dignity—be it from the African philosophy of Ubuntu or indigenous knowledge about consensus building. There are many alternative cultural practices and concepts that merit further exploration if we want to improve democratic practices—ho’oponopono, musyawarah, silahturahmi, asal ngumpul, palaver, shir, jirga, minga, dugnad, sociocracy is an arbitrary collection of terms I personally came across at different corners of the world, which all point at less confrontational and more cooperative ways of arriving at consensus and social cohesion than Western concepts of democracy stand for.

  Not only Eve and Adam’s conflict but also community conflicts and global conflicts can be conceptualized along similar lines. Liberation from humiliating domination must be conducted without perpetuating cycles of humiliation; otherwise dignity is lost. Emancipatory psychology must hold hands with relational psychology; otherwise social cohesion is lost. And dignity and social cohesion are needed if we want to cooperate as a global family and face our global challenges with our diversity as a source for our creativity.

  HOW TO INTERVENE IN CONFLICT, CONTROL NEGATIVE EMOTIONS, AND FOSTER POSITIVE EMOTIONS

  More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars. Yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.

  —Winston Churchill

  When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

  —Eleanor Roosevelt

  Let us assume we have just quarreled and are “out of our mind” (the preattentive brain has taken over). Modern brain imaging yields evidence of the effectiveness of meditation techniques. Buddhist concepts such as mindfulness and the concept of sukha point at “a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment.” We find similar approaches in many fields. Victor Frankl’s concept of self-observation in the framework of logotherapy, for instance, is comparable.

  The next step is to constructively regulate our negative emotions of anger, fear, and distress because they are the gatekeepers of any communicative effectiveness. Matsumoto et al. (2007) explain that four main ingredients are key: emotion regulation, critical thinking, openness, and flexibility. These psychological processes are the psychological engine of adaptation and adjustment.

  Barbara Fredrickson and Christine Branigan (2001) offer the broaden-and-build model. Rather than physical action
, positive emotions facilitate changes in cognitive activity. What negative emotions are to threat, positive emotions are to opportunity. Positive affects and emotions promote intuitive-holistic (right hemisphere) mental strategies, while negative affects and emotions further analytic-serial (left hemisphere) mental strategies.

  Too much positive emotion—“blissful ignorance”—however, may maintain or create conflict. Learning to “be happy” within abusive systemic frames makes for “useful idiots.” Successful conflict transformation often requires a certain amount of conceptual change for which negative emotions can be crucially instrumental. Paulo Freire’s conscientization has its place here. In the face of abuse, we need to muster the courage to foster systemic change so that abuse no longer occurs. Apartheid needed to be dismantled, not placated. And this had to be done in dignified ways. “Never again!” calls on all of us to help create a dignified world.

  Conflict benefits from being approached with a task-oriented learning-mastery orientation. With this orientation, even if we might get confused or look stupid, we learn together from our mistakes. People who believe intelligence is fixed develop an ego-oriented performance orientation. They are “facade polishers” who wish to satisfy expectations of others, avoid mistakes, and look smart. When they cover up for hazardous mistakes, they risk endangering others.