The Handbook of Conflict Resolution

Theory and Practice

Peter T. Coleman, Morton Deutsch, Eric C. Marcus, Peter T. Coleman, Morton Deutsch, Eric C. Marcus

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781118810323
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

Praise for The Handbook of Conflict Resolution

"This handbook is a classic. It helps connect the research of academia to the practical realities of peacemaking and peacebuilding like no other. It is both comprehensive and deeply informed on topics vital to the field like power, gender, cooperation, emotion, and trust. It now sits prominently on my bookshelf."
—Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

" The Handbook of Conflict Resolution offers an astonishing array of insightful articles on theory and practice by leading scholars and practitioners. Students, professors, and professionals alike can learn a great deal from studying this Handbook."
—William Ury, Director, Global Negotiation Project, Harvard University; coauthor, Getting to Yes and author, The Third Side

"Morton Deutsch, Peter Coleman, and Eric Marcus put together a handbook that will be helpful to many. I hope the book will reach well beyond North America to contribute to the growing worldwide interest in the constructive resolution of conflict. This book offers instructive ways to make this commitment a reality."
—George J. Mitchell, Former majority leader of the United States Senate; former chairman of the Peace Negotiations in Northern Ireland and the International Fact-Finding Committee on Violence in the Middle East; chairman of the board, Walt Disney Company; senior fellow at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University

"Let's be honest. This book is just too big to carry around in your hand. But that's because it is loaded with the most critical essays linking the theory and practice of conflict resolution. The Handbook of Conflict Resolution is heavy on content and should be a well-referenced resource on the desk of every mediator—as it is on mine."
—Johnston Barkat, Assistant Secretary-General, Ombudsman and Mediation Services, United Nations

PART ONE
INTERPERSONAL AND INTERGROUP PROCESSES

CHAPTER ONE
COOPERATION, COMPETITION, AND CONFLICT

Morton Deutsch

Some time ago in the garden of a friend’s house, my five-year-old son and his chum were struggling over possession of a water hose. (They were in conflict.) Each wanted to use it first to water the garden. (They had a competitive orientation.) Each was trying to tug it away from the other, and both were crying. Each was very frustrated, and neither was able to use the hose to sprinkle the flowers as he had desired. After reaching a deadlock in this tug-of-war, they began to punch one another and call each other names. As a result of their competitive approach, the conflict took a destructive course for both of them—producing frustration, crying, and violence.

Now imagine a different scenario. The garden consists mainly of two sections, flowers and vegetables. Each kid wants to use the hose first. Let’s suppose they want to resolve their conflict amicably. (They have a cooperative orientation.) One says to the other, “Let’s flip a coin to see who uses the hose first.” (It is a fair procedure for resolving the conflict.) The other agrees and suggests that the loser be given the right to select which section of the garden he waters. They both agree to the suggestion. (They reach a cooperative, win-win agreement.) Their agreements are implemented, and both children feel happy and good about one another. (These are common effects of a cooperative or constructive approach to a conflict.)

As this example illustrates, whether the participants in a conflict have a cooperative orientation or a competitive one is decisive in determining its course and outcomes. This chapter is concerned with understanding the processes involved in cooperation and competition, their effects, and the factors that contribute to developing a cooperative or competitive relationship. It is important to understand the nature of cooperation and competition because almost all conflicts are mixed motive, containing elements of both cooperation and competition.

A THEORY OF COOPERATION AND COMPETITION

The theory being presented here was initially developed by Morton Deutsch (1949a, 1949b, 1973, 1985, 2011) and much elaborated by David W. Johnson (Johnson and Johnson, 2005, 2011). The Johnsons have provided the most extensive summary of the theory and the research bearing on it; their 2005 book and 2011 publication should be consulted for greater detail.

The theory has two basic ideas. One relates to the type of interdependence among goals of the people involved in a given situation. The other pertains to the type of action that the people involved take.

I identify two basic types of goal interdependence: positive (where the goals are linked in such a way that the amount or probability of a person’s goal attainment is positively correlated with the amount or probability of another obtaining his goal) and negative (where the goals are linked in such a way that the amount or probability of goal attainment is negatively correlated with the amount or probability of the other’s goal attainment). To put it colloquially, if you’re positively linked with another, then you sink or swim together; with negative linkage, if the other sinks, you swim, and if the other swims, you sink.

Few situations are purely positive or negative. In most situations, people have a mixture of goals so that it is common for some of their goals initially to be positive and some negatively interdependent. For analytical purposes, I discuss pure situations in this section. In mixed situations, the relative strengths of the two types of goal interdependency, as well as their general orientation to one another, largely determine the nature of the conflict process.

I also characterize two basic types of action by an individual: effective actions, which improve the actor’s chances of obtaining a goal, and bungling actions, which worsen the actor’s chances of obtaining the goal. (For the purpose of simplicity, I use dichotomies for my basic concepts; the dichotomous types of interdependence and the dichotomous types of actions are, I assume, polar ends of continua.) I then combine types of interdependence and types of action to posit how they jointly affect three basic social psychological processes that I discuss later in this chapter: substitutability, attitudes (cathexis), and inducibility.

People’s goals may be linked for various reasons. Thus, positive interdependence can result from people liking one another, being rewarded in terms of their joint achievement, needing to share a resource or overcome an obstacle together, holding common membership or identification with a group whose fate is important to them, being unable to achieve their task goals unless they divide up the work, being influenced by personality and cultural orientation, being bound together because they are treated this way by a common enemy or an authority, and so on. Similarly, with regard to negative interdependence, it can result from people disliking one another or from their being rewarded in such a way that the more the other gets of the reward, the less one gets, and so on.

In addition to positive and negative interdependence, there can be lack of interdependence, or independence, such that the activities and fate of the people involved do not affect one another directly or indirectly. If they are completely independent of one another, no conflict arises; the existence of a conflict implies some form of interdependence.

One further point: asymmetries may exist with regard to the degree of interdependence in a relationship. Suppose that what you do or what happens to you may have a considerable effect on me, but what I do or what happens to me may have little impact on you. I am more dependent on you than you are on me. In the extreme case, you may be completely independent of me and I may be highly dependent on you. As a consequence of this asymmetry, you have greater power and influence in the relationship than I do. This power may be general if the asymmetry exists in many situations, or it may be situation specific if the asymmetry occurs only in a particular situation. A master has general power over a slave, while an auto mechanic repairing my car’s electrical system has situation-specific power.

The three concepts of substitutability, attitudes, and inducibility are vital to understanding the social and psychological processes involved in creating the major effects of cooperation and competition. Substitutability (how a person’s actions can satisfy another person’s intentions) is central to the functioning of all social institutions (the family, industry, schools), the division of labor, and role specialization. Unless the activities of other people can substitute for yours, you are like a person stranded on a desert island alone: you have to build your own house, find or produce your own food, protect yourself from harmful animals, treat your ailments and illnesses, educate yourself about the nature of your new environment and about how to do all these tasks, and so on, without the help of others. Being alone, you can neither create children nor have a family. Substitutability permits you to accept the activities of others in fulfilling your needs. Negative substitutability involves active rejection and effort to counteract the effects of another’s activities.

Attitudes refer to the predisposition to respond evaluatively, favorably or unfavorably, to aspects of one’s environment or self. Through natural selection, evolution has ensured that all living creatures have the capacity to respond positively to stimuli that are beneficial to them and negatively to those that are harmful. They are attracted to, approach, receive, ingest, like, enhance, and otherwise act positively toward beneficial objects, events, or other creatures. In contrast, they are repelled by harmful objects and circumstances and avoid, eject, attack, dislike, negate, and otherwise act negatively toward them. This inborn tendency to act positively toward the beneficial and negatively toward the harmful is the foundation on which the human potentials for cooperation and love, as well as for competition and hate, develop. The basic psychological orientation of cooperation implies the positive attitude that “we are for each other,” “we benefit one another”; competition, by contrast, implies the negative attitude that “we are against one another” and, in its extreme form, “you are out to harm me.”

Inducibility refers to the readiness to accept another’s influence to do what he or she wants. Negative inducibility refers to the readiness to reject or obstruct fulfillment of what the other wants. The complement of substitutability is inducibility: you are willing to be helpful to another whose actions are helpful to you but not to someone whose actions are harmful. In fact, you reject any request to help the other engage in harmful actions and, if possible, obstruct or interfere with these actions if they occur.

THE EFFECTS OF COOPERATION AND COMPETITION

Thus, the theory predicts that if you are in a positively interdependent relationship with someone who bungles, the bungling is not a substitute for effective actions you intended; thus, you view the bungling negatively. In fact, when your net-playing tennis partner in a doubles game allows an easy shot to get past him, you have to extend yourself to prevent being harmed by the error. But if your relationship is one of negative interdependence, and the other person bungles (as when your tennis opponent double-faults), your opponent’s bungle substitutes for an effective action on your part, and you regard it positively or value it. The reverse is true for effective actions. An opponent’s effective actions are not substitutable for yours and are negatively valued; a teammate can induce you to help him or her make an effective action, but you are likely to try to prevent or obstruct a bungling action by your teammate. In contrast, you are willing to help an opponent bungle, but your opponent is not likely to induce you to help him or her make an effective action (which, in effect, harms your chances of obtaining your goal).

The theory of cooperation and competition then goes on to make further predictions about different aspects of intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup processes from the predictions about substitutability, attitudes, and inducibility. Thus, assuming that the individual actions in a group are much more frequently effective than bungling, among the predictions that follow from the theory are that cooperative relations (those in which the goals of the parties involved are predominantly positively interdependent), as compared with competitive ones, show more of these positive characteristics:

1. Effective communication is exhibited. Ideas are verbalized, and group members are attentive to one another, accepting of the ideas of other members and influenced by them. They have fewer difficulties in communicating with or understanding others.
2. Friendliness, helpfulness, trust, and lessened obstructiveness are expressed in the discussions. Members also are more satisfied with the group and its solutions and favorably impressed by the contributions of the other group members. In addition, members of the cooperative groups rate themselves high in desire to win the respect of their colleagues and in obligation to the other members.
3. Coordination of effort, division of labor, orient...