Conflicts can be resolved without confrontations, it`s as true

Conflicts can be resolved without confrontations,
it's as true for nations as it is for individuals.
Conflict is a good thing. It prevents
stagnation both of persons and
of societies; it is the medium for
airing and solving problem-; it can resolve tensions and help establish identities, both of individuals and of groups;
in a flexible society it makes possible
necessary changes and thus makes possible the continuance of that society.
Conflict is also a dangerous thing. It
can fracture families, motivate murder,
close down factories and schools, divide
cities and countries. It can cause wars.
But conflict we have always with us.
It is well-nigh universal, Any universal
attribute, so rich in opposing possibilities, clearly calls for careful study if man
is to understand himself better.
The subject is older than history.
Hammurabi set up his code to deal with
it in Mesopotamia 3,500 years ago; a
later teacher advised: "Turn the other
cheek." Serious scientific attention has
been given it for many years; Margaret
Mead published Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples in
1937.
But unsurprisingly, "conflict resolution" as an essential part of the proper
study of mankind gained its greatest
impetus from mankind's most wide
spread and destructive conflict—the or
that left many of us saying "'Never
again": World War II.
"I started my graduate study not lor
after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and n:
work in social psychology has been
shadowed by the atomic cloud ever
since,"' says Morton Deutsch of Teachers College, Columbia University, a Iong
time NSF grantee and an acknowledged
leader in the field.
Interest in the subject mushroomed in
the I950's, and continues today, with
programs of "peace research" and "'violence prevention" Prrnly established on
many campuses,
Deutsche major work. The Resolutiion
of Conflict: Constructive and Desiructive
Processes (Yale University Press, 1973).
has not become a best seller. But the
work by Deutsch and his colleagues has
become an important part of the arsenal
tor processionals whose purpose is the
ironing out of knots in human interreiationships. As such, its influence is in
creasingly pervasive with regard not
only to conflicts among individuals but
extends inevitably into the reiat ; onships
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September / October
among groups—even among nations.
And it is a measure of its relevance that,
in a field like labor arbitration, for example, where the constructive approaches
to conflict are a major goal, a kind of
symbiotic relationship has emerged between the researchers and the practitioners. Deutsch has learned a great deal
from those individuals who, instinctively
as it appears to him, emerge as effective
arbiters of labor conflict; at the same
time he has managed to formulate some
of the fundamental principles that seem
to make the difference between a constructive and a destructive outcome of
conflict situations.
An area in which the influence of the
research appears to defy documentation,
despite indications of its presence, is in
the field of international relations. There
the parties, often in conflict with their
own insights, are bound by traditional
rules that, according to Deutsch, virtually bind them to escalating conflict: the
inevitable presence of weapons or power
balances, and the tendencies of nations,
saddled with contradictory ideologies and
rhetoric, to generalize rather than narrow the areas of disagreement among
them. For it is those two elements—the
existence (or fear of the existence) of
weapons, and the failure to circumscribe
the points at issue—that, the researchers
have found, almost invariably frustrate
efforts at successful, i.e., peaceful and
nondestructive, resolution of conflict.
So, while research officials within the
Government's operating foreign affairs
agencies may find few if any ways in
which they can apply directly the results
of research into conflict and its resolution, they continue to support and stimulate the research in the hope that the
real world and the world of reason will
somehow find a common footing.
Acme vs. Bolt
Research into conflict and the elements
that tend to dictate its directions proceeds generally on two fronts: observation of the real worlds of familial discord, labor relations, international relations and others which become case
studies in conflict, and laboratory experiments into which elements can be intro-
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duced on a controlled basis and outcomes
interpreted, if not quantified. Both are
revealing, but it is out of the latter, the
controlled experiments, that the principles seem most clearly to emerge and
against which understanding of realworld conflict can be measured.
Of these experimental situations,
among the most productive and best
known is probably the Acme/Bolt Trucking Game devised by Deutsch and his
associate, Robert M. Krauss.
In the game, players operate trucking
firms, called Acme and Bolt. They are
paid for moving their trucks from their
base to the other's base. They earn or
lose money on the basis of how long it
takes them to make the trip. Each has a
long-way-round, which he can choose to
take; it always costs him money. Each
also has a short, money-making route,
which he must share with the other; part
of that route is only one lane wide. Two
trucks meeting there are blocked, until
one backs up, lets the other go through,
and then proceeds in turn.
"It's a very simple conflict which you
would think could be resolved very eas-
With these weapons available, the experimenters found, threats developed,
and the players had trouble deciding who
would go through first. "One or the
other tended to use his gate," Deutsch
points out, "and this would lead to the
second player using his gate if he had
a gate.
"Both players would then be forced
to take their alternate paths and both
players would end up losing money in
a situation where they each could obviously make money.
"So we found that introducing weapons introduced the possibility of threat;
tempting people to use coercive tactics
tended to disrupt the cooperative character of the situation and make it more
difficult for the people to come to an
easy, mutually satisfying agreement."
Oddly, if only one player had a
weapon, he lost money, too. Although
the power balance was strongly tilted in
his favor under the conventional wisdom, his threats cut off cooperation from
the other; both sides suffered.
Toward a Gresham's Law
ily," says Deutsch. "They might simply
take turns going through first.
"Given that kind of simple experimental situation, we were interested in studying what determined the ease of difficulty of coming to a successful sort of
negotiation, a resolution of that conflict.
"One of the first things we did was
introduce weapons into the situation . . .
weapons in the form of gates, which the
player could use on the main path to
prevent the other player from going
through to his destination. That would
force the other player to take the long
alternate route which would cost him a
lot of money."
While the presence of weapons tends
to worsen a conflict, there are many
other similarly negative factors. Many
of them are pinpointed in the Acme-Bolt
struggles; others are revealed in different
experiments.
Destructive conflict, Deutsch points
out, "is characterized by a tendency to
expand and escalate."
This growth may come along any or
all of the conflict's dimensions: the size
and number of the issues, the number of
participants on each side, the size and
number of the principles or precedents
that are seen to be at stake, the costs the
parties are willing to bear, and the number of moral constraints the parties feel
free to abandon while dealing with the
other side.
"The harmful and dangerous elements
drive out those which would keep the
conflict within bounds," says J. S. Coleman, an NSF grantee now with the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago, who has formulated that as a kind
of "Gresham's Law of Conflict."
Typically, says Deutsch, in destructive
situations, communication between the
parties becomes both impoverished and
unreliable. Lies are expected, espionage
relied upon, and, in the end, the ability
to notice and respond to the other's
shifts away from a win-lose position is
impaired.
Force, deception, and cleverness are
seen as the keys to success; the second
party responds to the increased force,
or to anticipation of it, and the conflict
shifts from a relatively simple one to a
much more fundamental battle.
The longer the conflict continues, and
the higher the stakes become, the larger
each side's investment and the more difficult any withdrawal or compromise.
Destructive conflict, Deutsch points
out, "is easier in a sense to describe
(than constructive conflict); there seems
to be so much more of it." Certainly
more resources are given to it. "The
research and development expenditures
Nobody wins, The computerized Acme/Bolt
trucking game tempts each competitor
to share a profitable direct access to the
respective destinations or to use weapons
(gates) to force the other to use the
alternate, unprofitable route. Such games,
used in the study of conflict, reinforce
the conclusion that presence of weapons
tends to cause conflicts to escalate.
on techniques of conflict waging, as well
as the actual expenditures on conflict
waging, dwarf the expenditures for peace
building.
"This is obviously true at the national
level, where military expenditures dominate our national budget. I would contend that this is also true at the interpersonal and intergroup level. At the
interpersonal level, most of us receive
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considerable training in waging and suppressing conflict, and we have elaborate
institutions for dealing with adversary
relationships and for custodial care of the
psychological casualties of interpersonal
conflict.
"In contrast, there is little formal
training in the techniques of constructive
conflict resolution, and the institutional
resources for helping people to resolve
conflicts are meager indeed."
If the parties, instead of escalating
toward destructive conflict, want to cooperate to reach as agreeable a settlement as possible, what should they do?
What advantages do they have?
They can begin with open and honest
communication of relevant information.
This may, in certain cases, allow them to
get beneath the apparent issues to underlying ones that are really making the
trouble. It also enables each to benefit
from the other's knowledge, and thus
face the problem with greater intellectual
resources. Misunderstanding, confusion,
and mistrust are lowered.
Cooperation also allows each to see
that the other may have a valid point,
a legitimate interest at stake, and seek
a solution that responds to the needs of
both sides.
Although such openness, lack of defensiveness, and full utilization of resources are immensely helpful, cooperation in itself does not assure constructive
resolution.
It is important to narrow the scope of
the issues. Deutsch would say that narrowing the issues at stake is as important
as broadening the range of possible outcomes.
Ideology vs. resolution
"To take an example from international conflict," he said in an interview,
"during the Cuban missile crisis of
over ten years ago there was an initial
tendency for Khrushchev and Kennedy
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to define the conflict as a conflict between
the free world and Communism.
"I suppose neither [side] could imagine that Khrushchev would bargain
away Communism or that Kennedy
would bargain away the free world. And
so long as the conflict was defined in
these large ideological terms there was
no resolution.
"When the conflict started to be defined in terms of the location of 72 weapons systems, then you had a much more
specific, narrow conflict which was easier
to resolve."
The principle extends all the way
down to the nursery.
"Similarly, when mother and child
have a conflict about, say, a piece of
behavior by the child, if the mother talks
about the behavior as something the
child has done here and now, something
specific that's taken place at a given
place and time, it is much easier for the
child to change that action. But if she
talks about the bad child—'you're a bad
boy for doing this'—then she's really
made the conflict much larger. The conflict now involves the whole esteem of
the child and to retreat on that specific
instance of behavior is to admit that you
are a bad boy or that you were a bad boy
rather than you just happened to engage
in this specific limited behavior.
"So the definition of the issue in conflict so as to keep it narrow, specific,
here and now, is very important."
If, while the issue is narrowed, the
alternatives can be broadened, the resolution will tend, also, to be more constructive. There may be enough pieces
in the pie so that both sides can have
some. Neither side may be able to see
this; a third party may be necessary;
hence, the growing profession of labor
mediation and its equivalent, in micro,
marital counseling.
Often the parties may not mean the
same thing when they say the same
words. Thus, Deutsch:
"One of the first things that the third
party has to do is translate. Typically
in marital therapy you find the therapist
has to translate for the husband what the
wife means when she says, 'You don't
love me.'
"The husband feels he has told her he
loves her. He told her once and it's good
until revoked or denied. While the wife
has a different notion of what it means
to be told that you are loved. It means
that you are told in a continuing way
rather than once and for all. . . .
"Still another important role is to set
fair rules for fighting. Particularly with
inexperienced conflict parties, people who
really have not developed skills in negotiating. They tend to escalate conflict
much too readily. They tend to hit below
the belt much too readily and to make it
difficult to get back to rational discourse."
A question of influence
The conflict resolution field, as a scientific discipline, is young. (The first
issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution did not appear until 1957.) It is
hard to nail down, say, an important
case of international conflict being
brought to a successful conclusion by
application of principles directly growing
out of such work.
In fact, policymakers on a national
level deny that there are any. The researchers "don't tell you how to manipulate those variables that are under the
policymaker's control" in resolving conflict, complains Morton Halperin, former
member of the National Security Council
and currently with the Center for National Security Studies, a non-governmental organization in Washington.
And yet Deutsch, and others, believe
the field had at least indirect influence
on one of the central changes of world
relationships within this generation: the
detente between the United States and
the Soviet Union.
In their study of Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, Alexander L. George
and Richard Smoke, both NSF grantees
at Stanford University, point out that
"following the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev moved quickly to
a detente. What was significant in this
development was that American leaders
began to view the Soviet Union as a
limited adversary rather than as a total
enemy.
"Similarly, the nature of the conflict
with the Soviet Union was now perceived in non-zero-sum terms rather
than, as in the acute cold war era, in
terms of a zero-sum contest."
Deutsch might put it that the conflict
was changing from a total win-lose situation into one with broadened alternatives in which both could benefit.
"This change," George and Smoke
continue, "was dramatically signalled in
President Kennedy's eloquent American
University address of June 10, 1963,
when he called on the American people
to reexamine their views on the cold war
and warned his listeners 'not to see only
a distorted and desperate view of the
other side, not to see conflicts as inevitable, accommodation as impossible,
and communication as nothing more than
an exchange of threats. No government
or social system is so evil that its people
must .be considered lacking in virtue.' "
After broadening the range of alternatives, the two nations were able to narrow specific bits of their conflict into
issues that were susceptible to resolution.
"The two antagonists in effect agreed
not to push and thus exacerbate their
long-standing disagreements over Central and Eastern Europe, arms control inspection, Cuba, overseas U.S. bases, etc.,"
say George and Smoke.
". . . Whereas the cold war had been
dominated by a belief in the necessary
indivisibility of issues, with everything
somehow connected with everything else,
the limited detente ushered in a willingness to reach agreement on many single
issues that could be separated from
other, more important matters on which
agreement would have been more difficult.
"A number of such agreements were
quickly made—the partial test ban, the
'hot-line' agreement, cooperation on
peaceful uses and exploration of space,
etc. Other agreements, such as the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, followed
more slowly."
A bubbling interest
That turning-point speech, Deutsch
points out, contains many points that
could have been derived from study of
current social psychology. What an inquirer would like to find, of course, is
an equivalent of the famous letter from
Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt,
telling him of the fact of nuclear fission
and the possibilities of its use as a
weapon. But in this, as in other ways,
the social sciences do not follow the
physical sciences. There was no letter
from Deutsch, for example, to Kennedy.
There was, however, a bubbling interest within the Administration in the
ideas of conflict resolution then coming
out of the universities. There were, for
example, sessions where Deutsch and
other social scientists gathered with
groups that included high officials of
both the U.S. State Department and the
Soviet Embassy in Washington.
There was even one such session, in
Cacapon Springs, West Virginia, Deutsch
recalls, at a meeting called to discuss
Deutsch's earlier book, The Prevention
of World War III, where the Deputy
Soviet Ambassador and the American
Undersecretary of State engaged in the
technique of role reversal—each took
and argued for the other's side in the
then-current Berlin crisis.
While not contesting Deutsch's account, Pio D. Uliassi, senior program
officer for the U.S. State Department's
Office of External Research doubts "that
work in social psychology had much influence, even indirect, on detente.
"Leaving aside the political considerations that may have influenced our own
elect," he notes, "the research that influenced them most, I would guess, was
work dealing directly with Communist
systems, domestic and international, not
social psychological work dealing with
conflict resolution."
He feels, even more strongly than does
Halperin, that "most academic research,
in whatever substantive areas," falls
short of relevance because it doesn't deal
with the variables that are under the
policymakers' control. But, " O n the
other hand," he notes parenthetically,
"knowing that some things may not be
under your control could be very useful
for policy purposes."
Whatever the justification, there were
many social scientists familiar with the
conflict work who had solid contacts
with persons highly placed in the Administration of that time. Besides the
social psychologists, many political scientists, including George himself, located
at universities and think-tanks across the
country, performed conflict resolution
studies at the time under contracts from
such Federal agencies as the Department
of State and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. There is no proof of
their impact, but what resulted was action that followed, by coincidence or not,
the patterns the social psychologists and
political scientists were discerning. And
it worked. It is not surprising that it
should. These social sciences may not
have reached the predictive capabilities
of, say, chemistry. But valid scientific
study does produce valid insight.
Many years earlier, toward the end of
his own conflict-dominated life, Franklin
D. Roosevelt had warned:
"We are faced with the preeminent
fact that, if civilization is to survive, we
must cultivate the science of human relationships—the ability of all peoples, of
all kinds, to live together and work
together in the same world, at peace. . . ."
Despite our progress, the need seems
just as acute today. ®
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