Conflict Flashcards
What are conflicts?
- Disagreements or friction, disruption of routines in the group
- Hard to avoid
- Normal and not always dramatic
What are the roots for conflicts?
- There are alot of reasons for conflicts
- Humans are selfish
- We treat others if we like them
- Gender stereotypes
- High stakes places (competition vs cooperation)
Cooperation
- The success of one member is the succession for the group, or increase it
Competitive
- Success depends on performing better than others
Competition vs Cooperation
- Competition can be positive, athletes
- Cooperation + Teamwork leads to competition
Rivalry, Outperform, Greediness, Fear - Trigger different motivational systems
What are mixed motive situations?
- Situations that involve both cooperation and competetivenes
- The Prisoners Dilemma
- Norms of reciprocity, negative stronger than positive, especially when deliberate
Behavioural assimilation
The eventual matching of the behaviours displayed by cooperating or competing in groups
What is the social value orientation?
The dispositional tendency to respond to conflict settings in a prosocial or proself way
- 4 distinct orientations
Individualists
- Proself
- Dont interfere nor help others
- Harsh style but can adapt
Cooperators
- Prosocial and proself
- Win-win situation
- Cooperate if others do
Competitiors
- Harsh style
- Win-Loose situations
- Unconcerned with criticism or maintaining relations
- Harsh style
Altruists
- Prosocial
- Help those in need
Social dilemma
Choosing between maximizing my outcome or others
The tragedies of the commons
- I use too much of my resources, collapsing the society
- Second chance increase cooperation
- Normative standards in the group
Public goods dilemma
Members are expected to contribute but doesnt, cant get excluded though
- Free loaders
- Too high standard can cause conflicts too
Fairness dilemmas
- How far a decision is based on my perception
- Common distributive norms
Equity - the more you do the more you get
Power - the one in power gets more
Equality - everyone gets equal
Need - those in need gets more
Responsibility Norms
- Who to blame or credit once the work is done
- More aware of our contributions
- Self-serving attributes results in conflict and loss of cohesion
Egocentrism
Giving yourself more credit than is warranted, a bias
Conflict over power
- Power struggles in groups
- Business and corporate settings
- Manipulation and disagreements
Task conflict
- Relevant to goals and procedures (ideas or opinions)
- Happens often
Process Conflicts
- The methods used to complete the tasks
- How roles got allocated
Relationship conflict
- Interpersonal discord that occurs when group members dislike one another
- Intragroup vs intergroup conflicts
- 40 % of the conflicts
- We dont like to be critiqued
Uncertainty to Commitment
- Gets more committed to your opinion as the conflict escalates
- Belief perseverance
- Conformation bias
- Reactance
Perception to Misperception
Misperception to Understanding
- Individuals perception of the situation and the people in it
- Attitudes, views, actions, opinions etc
- Fundamental attributions error
- Loss of trust in each other
- Assumptions instead of asking
- Leads to competition
- Takes critic personally
Actively communicating ones goals and opinions through discussions
Soft tactics to Hard tactics
- Tactics are the ways people influence each other to go for their opinions
- Softer tactics in the beginning, shifts to harsher one as it escalates
- Hard tactics trigger reactance, resilience and negative emotions
- People got different capacities to use harder tactics
Reciprocity to Retaliation
Retaliation to Forgiveness
- Sustained by norms of reciprocity
- Rough reciprocity; overmatching and undermatching
- Justified for oneself
- Tit for tat, reciprocal process
- Begins with cooperation
- Forgiveness, revenge is risky
Irritation to Anger
Anger to Composure
- Emotions take over as conflicts escalates
- Negative emotions ignites conflicts
- Anger have some benefits but usually not the case
- Encourage to regain control
- Norms in the group
- Apologies
Few to Many
Many to Few
- Persuade others to join my side
- The get the most power
- A coalition, us vs them
- Use of mediator
- Increase communication
- Lets both sides express their sides
- Clarify ambiguities
- Offer guidance
Conflict resolution
- Conflicts subside with time
Subgroups, solutions or leaving the group
Commitment to Negotioation
- Important for conflict de-escalation and resolution
- A reciprocal communication process to reach an agreement
- Takes time
Distributive negotiations
A process involving mutual compromise
- Small steps towards an agreement
- Haggling and bartering
- Maximizing your outcome
Integrative negotiations
A process involving a collaborative resolution method
- Benefit both parties
Different negotiation styles
Soft Bargainers
- Gentle style
- Avoid conflicts
- Makes offer
Hard Bargainers
- Hard styles
- Extreme positions and demands
- Hostile
Principle Negotiators
- Integrative solutions
- Focus on the problem than personal needs and motives
- Positional bargaining is dangerous - locks themselves, gets more committed to the position
Dual Concern Model
- Two fundamental themes on how one deal with conflict
- Tactics
- Prosocial or proself
5 core conflict resolution modes
- How you deal with conflicts
- We use one or mix these approaches during conflict
- Personal conflicts may get worse with cooperative style
- Focus on the task instead of conflict
Avoidance - Negative - Ignores the fight, built up a tolerance against conflicts
- Change the topic
- Wait and see
Fighting - negative - Forcing your way
- Win-loose situation
Yielding - positive - Passive prosocial approach
- Give in for the sake of the group
- They could be wrong
Cooperation - positive - Active prosocial and proself approach
- Identify underlying issues and work together
- Win-win situation
- Task-oriented conflicts
Is conflict good or evil?
- Its a natural process
- Conflicts are not inherently bad, it can be used to spark up discussions
- Poor management of making decisions strategies gives conflicts
- Increase unity, understanding of your role
- Work proactively decreases conflicts
- Are no conflicts that much better?
- Performance increased if managed successfully
