Changes: Conflict

Latest revision as of 14:42, 9 December 2012

Social psychology: Altruism · Attribution · Attitudes · Conformity · Discrimination · Groups · Interpersonal relations · Obedience · Prejudice · Norms · Perception · Index · Outline

This article is in need of attention from a psychologist/academic expert on the subject.
Please help recruit one, or improve this page yourself if you are qualified.
This banner appears on articles that are weak and whose contents should be approached with academic caution.

Conflict is a state of opposition, disagreement or incompatibility between two or more people or groups of people, which is sometimes characterized by physical violence. Military conflict between states may constitute war.

Definitions

In political terms, "conflict" refers to an ongoing state of hostility between two groups of people.

Conflict as taught for graduate and professional work in conflict resolution commonly has the definition: "when two or more parties, with perceived incompatible goals, seek to undermine each other's goal-seeking capability".

One should not confuse the distinction between the presence and absence of conflict with the difference between competition and co-operation. In competitive situations, the two or more parties each have mutually inconsistent goals, so that when either party tries to reach their goal it will undermine the attempts of the other to reach theirs. Therefore, competitive situations will by their nature cause conflict. However, conflict can also occur in cooperative situations, in which two or more parties have consistent goals, because the manner in which one party tries to reach their goal can still undermine the other.

Types and Modes of Conflict

A conceptual conflict can escalate into a verbal exchange and/or result in fighting.

Conflict can exist at a variety of levels of analysis:

Intrapersonal conflict (eg in psychodynamic theory)
Role conflicts
Interpersonal conflict
Marital conflict
group conflict
Organizational conflict
Workplace conflict
Community conflict
Social conflict see Social conflict theory
Intra-state conflict (for example: civil wars, election campaigns, genocide)
International conflict - war

Conflicts in these levels may appear "nested" in conflicts residing at larger levels of analysis. For example, conflict within a work team may play out the dynamics of a broader conflict in the organization as a whole. (See Marie Dugan's article on Nested Conflict. John Paul Lederach has also written on this.)

Theorists have claimed that parties can conceptualise responses to conflict according to a two-dimensional scheme; concern for one's own outcomes and concern for the outcomes of the other party. This scheme leads to the following hypotheses:

High concern for both one's own and the other party's outcomes leads to attempts to find mutually beneficial solutions.
High concern for one's own outcomes only leads to attempts to "win" the conflict.
High concern for the other party's outcomes only leads to allowing the other to "win" the conflict.
No concern for either side's outcomes leads to attempts to avoid the conflict.

In Western society, practitioners usually suggest that attempts to find mutually beneficial solutions lead to the most satisfactory outcomes, but this may not hold true for many Asian societies.

Several theorists detect successive phases in the development of conflicts.

Practitioners of nonviolence have developed many practices to solve social and political conflicts without resorting to violence or coercion.

Conflict process

Examples

Approach-avoidance conflict is an example of intrapersonal conflict.

The Vietnam Conflict is commonly regarded as a war.

Many conflicts have a supposedly racial or ethnic conflicts. This would include such conflicts as the Bosnian-Croatian conflict (see Kosovo), the conflict in Rwanda, and the conflict in Kazakhstan.

Class conflict forms an important topic in much Marxist thought.

Another type of conflict exists between governments and guerrilla groups or groups engaged in asymmetric warfare.

External links

Debate Conflicts Open Democracy Conflicts Debate. "Even when guns are silent, the ideas behind them threaten. Warfare and conflict resolution urgently need to be explained, their causes clarified, and creative solutions explored".

This page uses Creative Commons Licensed content from Wikipedia (view authors).

@@ Line 66: / Line 66: @@
 * [[Approach-avoidance conflict]]
 * [[Arguments]]
+* [[Bargaining]]
 * [[Bullying]]
 * [[Competition]]
@@ Line 71: / Line 72: @@
 * [[Conflict resolution research]]
 * [[Conflict theory]]
+* [[Contact hypothesis]]
 * [[Dispute]]
 * [[Emotional conflict]]