The Handbook of Conflict Resolution (3rd ed)

by Peter T Coleman

  Belongingness and love needs—to be part of a group (a family, a circle of friends), to feel cared for, to care for others, to be intimate with another, and so forth. Frustration of these needs produces alienation, loneliness, and various forms of neurosis.

  Esteem needs—for self-esteem (self-confidence, mastery, worth, strength, and the like) and social esteem (respect, dignity, appreciation, and so on). Feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, helplessness, incompetence, shame, guilt, and the like are associated with frustration in this category.

  Self-actualization needs—to achieve one’s full potential in relation to others, in developing one’s own talents, and in taking part in one’s community (includes metaneeds such as truth, justice, beauty, curiosity, and playfulness). Frustration of the self-actualization need leads to restlessness, depression, and loss of zest in life.

  Maslow considered the first four on this list to be deficiency needs, arising from a lack of what a person needs. Once these basic needs are all reasonably satisfied, we get in touch with our needs for self-actualization and pursue their satisfaction. Although Maslow initially postulated needs as hierarchically ordered, he later accepted the view that in reality, some people violate the hierarchy—say, putting themselves in danger and going hungry to protect someone they love or a group with which they identify.

  One interesting, albeit controversial, perspective on Maslow’s theory queries the function of hierarchical order, particularly in relation to applying the definition of self-transcendence to negative consequences, or “negative” self-transcendence (Fields, 2004; Koltko-Rivera, 2006). If self-transcendence is defined as surrendering one’s personal needs to a cause beyond the self or a greater good, then these theorists ask whether we should include not only Gandhi but also suicide terrorists as self-transcendent individuals. This speculation brings up the question of order in Maslow’s theory: suicide terrorists are often young and would appear unlikely to have successfully completed the lower motivational levels in the hierarchy. Koltko highlights the need for further exploration concerning individuals who step out of sequence in fulfilling Maslow’s needs and questions whether this leads to a negative pole of self-transcendence.

  Maslow’s theory, or a variation of it, is the foundation of the “human needs” theory of John Burton (1990) and his colleagues and students. The fundamental thesis of this approach is that a conflict is not resolved constructively unless the parties’ basic human needs are brought out and dealt with to the satisfaction of each party. The application of this idea to conflict is called the “problem-solving workshop.” Burton initially developed it while he was serving as a consultant to the conflict in Cyprus between the Greeks and the Turks; subsequently, it was systematically developed by Kelman (1986) and his colleagues. It entails creating conditions that enable the participants to express their real needs openly and honestly, and then try to work out a resolution that meets the basic needs of both sides. (See also mention of this in chapter 10.)

  Social Learning Theory

  In Bandura’s interactionist perspective on personality (Bandura, 1986), the individual is a thinking person who can impose some direction on the forces from within and the pressures from the external environment. Bandura asserts that behavior is a function of a person in her environment: cognition, other personal traits, and the environment mutually influence one another. People learn by observing the behavior of others and the different consequences attending these behaviors. Learning requires that the person be aware of appropriate responses and value the consequences of the behavior in question.

  Unlike a number of other theorists, Bandura does not believe that aggression is innate. Through imitation of social models, people learn aggression, altruism, and other forms of social behavior as well as constructive and destructive ways of dealing with conflict. The ability to imitate another’s behavior depends on the characteristics of the model (whether or not the model makes her behavior unambiguous and clearly observable), the attention of the observer (whether or not the observer is sharply focused on the model’s behavior), memory processes (whether or not the observer is intelligent and able to recall what has been observed), and behavior capabilities (whether or not the observer has the physical and intellectual capability to reproduce the behavior observed).

  Assuming that one has the capability, readiness to reproduce the behavior of the model is determined by factors such as whether the model has been perceived to obtain positive or negative consequences as a result of behavior, the attractiveness and power of the model, the vividness of behavior, and the intrinsic attractiveness of behavior that has been modeled. Thus, a boy may be predisposed to engage in aggressive behavior (using a handgun to threaten a rival) if he has seen a prestigious older figure (his father, older brother, a group leader, a movie star) engage in such behavior and feel good about doing so. Access to a handgun ensures that the boy has the capability of acting on his aggressive predisposition.

  Developing a sense of self-efficacy or confidence in these competencies requires one to (1) use these skills to master tasks and overcome the obstacles posed by the environment, (2) cultivate belief in the capacity to use one’s competencies effectively, and (3) identify realistic goals and opportunities to use one’s skills effectively. Realistic encouragement to achieve an ambitious but attainable goal promotes successful experience, which aids in developing the sense of self-efficacy; social prodding to achieve unattainable goals often produces a sense of failure and undermines self-efficacy.

  We selectively emphasize Bandura’s concepts of observational learning and self-efficacy because of their relevance to conflict. Given that most people acquire their knowledge, attitudes, and skills in managing conflict through observational learning, some people have inadequate knowledge, inappropriate attitudes, and poor skills for resolving their conflicts constructively while others are better prepared to do so. It is very much a function of the models they have been exposed to in their families, school, communities, and the media. It is our impression that many people have been exposed to poor models. When this is the case, making changes in the ways they handle conflict requires relearning, a process involving commitment and effort.

  Relearning involves helping people become fully aware of how they currently behave in conflict situations, exposing them to models of constructive behavior, and extending repeated opportunities in various situations to enact and be rewarded for constructive behavior. In the course of relearning, people should become uncomfortable and dissatisfied with their old, ineffective ways of managing conflict so that they may develop a sense of self-efficacy in new, constructive methods of conflict resolution.

  Social Situations and Psychological Orientations

  Although Deutsch is not classified as a personality theorist, his concept of situationally linked psychological orientations is a useful and somewhat different perspective. He employs the term psychological orientation to refer to a more or less consistent complex of cognitive, motivational, and moral orientations to a given situation that serve to guide one’s behavior and response to a particular situation. He assumes that the causal arrow between psychological orientation and social situation is bidirectional; a given psychological orientation can lead to a given type of social relation or be induced by that type of social relation (Deutsch, 1982, 1985, 2012). With Wish and Kaplan (Wish, Deutsch, and Kaplan, 1976), he identified five basic dimensions of interpersonal relations:

  Cooperation-competition. Social relations such as “close friends,” “teammates,” and “coworkers” are usually on the cooperative side of this dimension, while “enemies,” “political opponents,” and “rivals” are usually on the competitive side. See chapter 1 for further discussion.

  Power distribution (equal versus unequal). “Business partners,” “business rivals,” and “close friends” are typically on the equal side, while “parent and child,” “teacher and student,” and “boss and employee” are on the unequal side. See chapter 6 for further discussio
n.

  Task oriented versus social-emotional. Interpersonal relations such as “lovers” and “close friends” are social-emotional, while “task force,” “negotiators,” and “business rivals” are task oriented.

  Formal versus informal. Relations with a bureaucracy tend to be formal and regulated by externally determined social rules and conventions, while the relationship norms between intimates are informally determined by the participants.

  Intensity and importance. This dimension has to do with the intensity or superficiality of the relationship. Important relationships, as between parent and child or between lovers, are on the important side, while unimportant relationships, as between casual acquaintances or between salesperson and customer, are on the superficial side.

  The character of a given social relationship can be identified by locating it on all the dimensions. Thus, an intimate relationship between lovers is typically characterized in the United States as relatively cooperative, equal, social-emotional, informal, and intense. Similarly, a sadomasochistic relationship between a bully and his victim is usually identified as competitive, unequal, social-emotional, informal, and intense. Deutsch indicates that a distinctive psychological orientation is associated with the particular location of a social relationship along the five dimensions. Positing that there are three components of a psychological orientation that are mutually consistent, he describes them as follows:

  Cognitive orientation consists of structured expectations about oneself, the social environment, and the people involved. This makes it possible for one to interpret and respond quickly to what is going on in a specific situation. If your expectation leads to inappropriate interpretation and response, then you will likely revise that expectation. Or if the circumstances confronting you are sufficiently malleable, your interpretation and response to them may help to shape their form. Thus, what you expect to happen in a situation involving negotiations about your salary with your boss is likely to be quite different from what you expect in a situation in which you and your spouse are making love.

  Motivational orientation alerts one to the possibility that in the situation, certain types of need may be gratified or frustrated. It orients you to questions such as, “What do I want here, and how do I get it?” “What is to be valued or feared in this relationship?” In a business negotiation, you are oriented to the satisfaction of financial needs, not affection; in a love relationship, the opposite is true.

  Moral orientation focuses on the mutual obligations, rights, and entitlements of the people involved in the relationship. It implies that in a relationship you and the other mutually perceive the obligations you have to one another and mutually respect the framework of social norms that define what is fair or unfair in the interactions and outcomes of everyone involved.

  To illustrate Deutsch’s ideas, we contrast the psychological orientations in two relations: friend-friend and police officer–thief. For practical purposes, we limit our discussion of the cooperative-competitive, power, and task-oriented versus social emotional dimensions.

  Friends have a cooperative cognitive orientation: “we are for one another.” The motivational orientation is of affection, affiliation, and trust, and the moral orientation is one of mutual benevolence, respect, and equality. In contrast, the police officer and thief have a competitive cognitive orientation (what’s good for the other is bad for me); the motivational orientation is of hostility, suspicion, and aggressiveness or defensiveness; the moral orientation involved is that of a win-lose struggle to be conducted under either fair rules or a no-holds-barred one in which any means to defeat the other can be employed.

  Friends are of equal power and employ their power cooperatively. Their cognitive orientation to power and influence relies on its positive forms (persuasion, benefit, legitimate power); their motivational orientation supports mutual esteem, respect, and status for both parties; their moral orientation is that of egalitarianism. In contrast, the police officer and thief are of unequal power. The officer is cognitively oriented toward using negative forms of power (coercion and harm), with a motivational orientation to dominate, command, and control. Morally, the officer feels superior and ready to exclude the thief from the former’s moral community (those who are entitled to care and justice). In cognitive response to the low-power position, the thief either tries to improve power relative to the police officer or submits to the role as one who is under the officer’s control. Thus, the thief’s motivational orientation may be rebellious and resistant (expressing the need for autonomy and inferiority avoidance) or passive and submissive (expressing the need for abasement). This moral orientation is either to exclude the officer from the thief’s own moral community or to “identify with the aggressor” (Freud, 1937), adopting the moral authority of the more powerful for oneself.

  Friends have a social-emotional orientation, while the police officer and thief have a task-oriented relationship to one another. In the latter, one is cognitively oriented to making decisions about which means are most efficient in achieving one’s ends; the task-oriented relationship requires an analytical attitude to compare the effectiveness of various means. One is oriented to the other impersonally as an instrument to achieve one’s ends. The motivational orientation evoked by a task-oriented relationship is that of achievement, and the moral orientation toward the other is utilitarian. In contrast, friends have a cognitive orientation in which the unique personal qualities and identity of the other are of paramount importance. Motivations characteristic of such relations include affiliation, affection, esteem, play, and nurturance-succorance. The moral obligation to a friend is to esteem the other as a person and help when the other is in need.

  Deutsch’s view of the relation between social situation and psychological orientation is not only that a particular situation induces a particular psychological orientation, but also that individuals vary in their psychological orientation and personality. Based on their life experiences, some people tend to be cooperative, egalitarian, and social-emotional in their orientation, while others tend to be competitive, power seeking, and task oriented. For example, in many cultures, women, compared to men, tend to have relatively strong orientations of the former type (cooperative and so on), while men have relatively stronger orientations of the latter (competitive) type.

  Personality disposition influences the choice of social situations and the social relations that one seeks out or avoids. Given the opportunity, people select social relations and situations that are most compatible with their dominant psychological orientations. They also seek to alter or leave a social relation or situation if it is incompatible with their disposition. If this is impossible, they employ the alternative, latent psychological orientations within themselves that are compatible with the social situation.

  Knowledge of the dimensions of social relations can be helpful to a conflict practitioner in analyzing both the characteristics of a situation and the psychological orientations the parties are likely to display in the circumstances. It is also useful in characterizing individuals in terms of their dominant psychological orientations to social situations. It should be noted, however, that Deutsch’s ideas are not well specified about what happens if the individual’s disposition and the situational requirements are incompatible.

  TRAIT APPROACHES

  The second major approach to the study of personality is the nomothetic, exemplified by trait research and its application to behavior. Traits can be defined as words summarizing a set of behaviors or describing a consistent response to relationships and situations as measured through an assessment instrument (Martin, 1988). It is assumed that in well-designed and tested assessment instruments, many individuals can validly report social-emotional responses and behaviors that are broadly consistent across situations (some characteristics are less stable across situations than others). Measurement of individual characteristics is widespread and has proven to be quite useful in a number of situations, as when a clinical psychologis
t or psychiatrist diagnoses a patient and prescribes treatment based on the results of a battery of trait-assessment instruments in addition to a diagnostic interview. Research studies frequently use personality measures to predict behavior under designated situational constraints. Personality assessment may also be extremely useful in placing children or adults in the most effective educational settings or identifying a cognitive mediator that affects behavior, such as an individual’s attribution of intentionality as a reaction to imagined hostility from another.

  Because our interests center on multitrait measurement, we briefly mention single-trait approaches and refer readers to other sources for in-depth discussion. The single-trait approach to studying conflict process and outcome seeks to understand social behavior in terms of relatively stable traits or dispositions residing within the individual; it is now considered to have limited usefulness. The trait approach typically focuses on one or more enduring predispositions of specific types: motivational tendencies (aggression, power, pride, fear), character traits (authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, locus of control, dogmatism), cognitive tendencies (cognitive simplicity versus complexity, open versus closed mind), values and ideologies, self-conceptions and bases of self-esteem, and learned habits and skills of coping. (See Bell and Blakeney, 1977; Neale and Bazerman, 1983; Rotter, 1980; and Stevens, Bavetta, and Gist, 1993, for discussions of some single-trait measures.)

  The now-dominant approach to explaining social behavior is one that seeks to understand its regularity in terms of the interacting and reciprocally influencing contribution of both situational and dispositional determinants. There are several well-supported propositions in this approach: