Conflict and intergroup relations Flashcards
Muzafer Sherif - Robbers gave: Rattlers and Eagles
Investigated intergroup relations by studying two groups at a summer camp.
Realistic group conflict theory
All groups would prefer to be “haves” rather than “have-nots” so they take steps to obtain desired resources & prevent the other group from obtaining those resources.
Insufficient resources -> Competition for resources -> conflict
The Discontinuity effect
People are more competitive when in groups then when acting as individuals.
Three motivation factors that sustain the discontinuity effect?
- Greed
- Fear
- Identity
Insko Prisoners Dilemma Game (PDG)
Groups consistently choose to compete instead of to cooperate.
De percentage of competition is highest amoung?
Group to group competition
How can you limit the tendency for competition that lead to intergroup conflict?
By the tit-for-tat strategy
Tit for that (TFT) Axelrood
A bargaining strategy that begins with cooperation but then imitates the other person’s choices so that cooperation is met with cooperation and competition with competition.
Social dominance theory Sidanius and Pratto
An approach to oppresion and domination assuming that conflict between groups results from dynamic tensions between hierarchically ranked groups within society
Anger and retailiation
The emotional mechanisms / reactions described by the frustration agresion hypothesis and the general aggression model van trigger impulsive intergroup aggression.
Frustration–aggression hypothesis
An early motivational model that argued that individuals become more aggressive whenever external conditions prevent them from reaching their goals.
General aggression model
A framework for organizing biological, environmental, social, and psychological factors that influence the expression of hostile, negative behavior, including (1) person and situational inputs; (2) cognitive, affective, and arousal states, and (3) cognitive appraisals.
The scapegoat theory
It explains why groups that experience setbacks somtimes fight other, more defenseless groups.
If group A cannot agress against ggroup B, it may instead instigate conflict with another group C.
An explanation of intergroup conflict arguing that hostility caused by frustrating environ mental circumstances (such as abuse by others or failure) is released by taking hostile actions against members of other social groups.
The norm of reciprocity
Like individuals, groups answer threats with threats, insults with insults and agression with agression.
What describes the unfolding of violence at Robbers Cave?
The upward spiral model of conflict intensification
What type of cultures are there?
Honor: Importance of family
Dignity
Face
Evolutionary theorie
Suggests that confronting other groups was adaptive during human’s evolutionary past as intergroup relations were rarly peaceful.
Natural selecting favored individuals who preferred ingroup members over outgroup members.
Linguistic intergroup bias
The tendency to describe positive ingroup and negative outgroup behaviors more abstractly, and negative ingroup and positive outgroup behaviors more concretely.
Outgroup homogeneity bias
The perceptual tendency to assume that the members of other groups are very similar to each other, whereas the membership of one’s own group is more heterogeneous.
Law of small numbers
Basing generalizations about the outgroup on observations of a small number of individuals from that group.
Group attribution error
Mistakenly assuming that specific group members’ personal characteristics and preferences, including their beliefs, attitudes, and decisions, are similar to the preferences of the group to which they belong.
Ultimate attribution error (UAE)
Attributing negative actions performed by members of the outgroup to dis positional qualities and positive actions to situational, fluctuating circumstances.
Stereotypes
A socially shared set of cognitive generalizations (e.g., beliefs and expectations) about the qualities and characteristics of the members of a particular group or social category.
Stereotype content model
A theory of group perception positing that people’s stereotyped views about social groups reflect their beliefs about the warmth and competence of the stereotyped group.
Pity = high in warmth but low in competence
contempt = low in competence and low in warmth
admiration = high in warmth and high in competence
envy = low in warmth and high in competence
Tajfel and Turner’s “minimal intergroup situation”
When asked to distribute resources to others, favored the members of one’s own group.
Social categorization causes preceivers to distinguish between ingroup and outgroup members.
They concluded that the “mere perception of belonging to two distinct groups – that is, social categorization per se – is sufficient to trigger intergroup discrimination favoring the ingroup.
Ethnocentrism
belief that one’s own tribe, region, or country is superior to all others
Group hate
When intergroup conflict reaches extreme levels, group members view their own group as morally superior and members of the outgroup as less than human.
Moral exclusion
A psychological process whereby opponents in a conflict come to view each other as underserving of morally mandated rights and protections.
Dehumanizing
Believing that other individuals or entire groups of individuals lack the qualities thought to distinguish human beings from other animals; such dehumanization serves to rationalize the extremely negative treatment of other groups.
Bandura’s research of dehumanizing
Groups that tend to be more described as animalistic are treated more negatively
The ingroup–outgroup bias, when applied to larger groups such as tribes or nations, was labeled ……. by Sumner.
ethnocentrism
Double-standard thinking
Judging the actions and attributes of one’s own group positively but viewing these very same behaviors or displays negatively when the outgroup performs them.
…. and …… frame the behaviors and characteristics of the ingroup more positively than these same behaviors and characteristics displayed by the outgroup.
Double-standard thinking and the linguistic intergroup bias
Implicit Association Test (IAT) developed by Greenwald
Measure of implicit bias that can detect subtle, unconscious forms of bias.
Social identity theory
Suggests that individuals, by championing the ingroup, protext and sustain their identity and self-esteem.
Group members stress the value of their onw group relative to other groups as a means of indirectly enhancing their social identity (and thus self worth)
The contact hypothesis
Factors that augment the positive impact?
the prediction that contact between the members of different groups wil reduce intergroup conflict.
Maintains that relations between groups are improved when the groups interact together in a positive contact situation.
Creating positive contact
Subordinate goals (more than 2 people are nessasary)
a common enemy
de virtue contact hypothesis (online contact)
the importance of friendships (extended contact hypothesis.
Extended contact hypothesis
The prediction that cross-group friendships not only increase the two friends acceptance of the respective outgroup but also cause other members of their group to become more positive toward the outgroups as well
Meta analysis Pettigrew & Tropp
Any contact was better than nothing, high quality contact is best but its effects vary across contexts
The necessary conditions for creating positive contact situations identified by Allport (4)
- Equal status
- Common goals
- Cooperation
- Support of authorities, law or custom
Conflict reduction by?
- Decategorization encourages members to recognize the individuality of the outgroup members.
- The common ingroup identity model (Dovidio and Gaertner) suggests that recategorization— collapsing the boundaries between groups—reduces conflict yet can promote the retention of identities. The common enemy approach is an example of recategorization.
- Cross-categorization involves making salient, multiple group memberships and intergroup forgiveness urges members to accept and move beyond prior conflicts.
- Controlling stereotypes thinking (Devine)
Factors that promote intergroup forgiveness
- Peaceful contact
- Empathy
- Exchange of apologies
- Acceptance of a common group identity
Factors that inhibit intergroup forgiveness
- Strength of identification with the ingroup
- Exclusion of the outgroup
- Negative emotions (like anger)
- Claiming victimization and exploitation by the outgroup
Aronson’s jigsaw method
Jigsaw learning groups: School-based training in conflict resolution:
is an educational intervention that reduces prejudice by assigning students from different racial or ethnic groups to a single learning group.
o Define the conflict
o Exchange information
o View from multiple perspectives
o Generate solutions
o Select mutually advantageous solution
Resolving conflict conclusions
- Intergroup conflict is not inevitable. Even the most adversarial groups can achieve a more harmonious coexistence by promoting positive contact between their members and refusing think of the other group members in negative, stereotype.
- Even the Robbers Cave study ended on a positive note. The campers asked to return to town in the same bus: d ways
- When they asked if this might be done and received an affirmative answer from the staff, some of them cheered. Then the bus pulled out, the seating arrangement did not follow group lines. Many boys looked back at the camp, and Wilson cried because camp was over.
Virtual contact hypothesis
The prediction that online contact between the members of different groups will improve relations between these groups.
Mixed motive situation
A performance setting in which the interdependence amoung interactants involves both competitve and cooperative goal structures
Behavioral assimilation
The eventual matching of the behaviors displayed by cooperating or competing group members
Is conflict an unavoidable evil or a necessary good?
Conflict is a natural consequence of joining a group and cannot be avoided completely.
Research suggests that conflicts, when managed successfully, promote positive group functioning. However, because of the difficulties groups face when trying to deal with conflict, De Dreu and Weingart conclude that in most cases conflict causes more harm than good.
What are the three approaches of negotiation?
Soft negotiation
Hard negotiation
Princepled negotiation
Distributive negotiation
Resolving differences of opinion and transactions by claiming or dividing resources, making offers and responding with counteroffers, and the guarded disclosure of interests.
Integrative negotiation
Resolving differences of opinion and transactions by identifying common and complementary interests and proposing solutions that satisfy all concerned parties.
The Harvard Negotiation Project maintains that
principled, integrative negotiation is more effective than either soft or hard bargaining.
Because many conflicts are rooted in misunderstandings and misperceptions, group members can reduce conflict by
by actively communicating information about their motives and goals through discussion.
Dual concern model
= A conceptual perspective on methods of dealing with conflict that assumes avoiding, yielding, fighting, and cooperating differ along two basic dimensions: concern for self and concern for other.
identifies four (or five) means of dealing with conflicts:
avoiding, yielding, fighting, and cooperating (and conciliation)—that differ along two dimensions: concern for self and concern for others.
Relationship conflict
Interpersonal discord that occurs when group members dislike one another.
It can be increased by any factor that causes disaffection between group members
Why does conflict escalate?
When individuals defend their viewpoints in groups, they become more committed to their positions, as illustrated by the dollar auction and reactance.
Reactance
A complex emotional and cognitive reaction that occurs when individuals feel that their freedom to make choices has been threatened or eliminated.
Krauss’s (1960) trucking game experiment
indicated conflict escalates when each side could threaten the other.
Pruitt and his colleagues (1997) found that when initial request are denied they?
individuals shift from soft tactics to hard influence tactics when their initial requests are denied.
Other factors that contribute to the escalation of conflict in groups include ?
- negative reciprocity, as when negative actions provoke negative reactions in others; angry emotions that trigger expressions of anger among members; and
- the formation of coalitions that embroil formerly neutral members in the conflict
Social dilemma
Despites arise when members:
An interpersonal situation where individuals must choose between maximizing their personal outcomes or maximizing their group’s outcomes.
Stimulare conflict by tempting members to act in their own self-interest to the detriment of the group and its goals.
- exploit a shared resource (a commons dilemma or social trap),
- do not contribute their share (a public goods dilemma, free riding),
- disagree on the procedures to follow in dividing the resources (procedural justice) and respond negatively to resource distributions (distributive justice),
- do not agree on the norms to follow when apportioning resources (e.g., equality, equity, power, responsibility, and need),
- feel they are receiving less than they should, given their contribution to the group (negative inequity; work by Brosnan and de Waal, suggests that other species are sensitive to unfair distributions of resources), and
- take more than their fair share of responsibility for a successful outcome (egocentrism) or avoid blame for group failure (self-serving attributions of responsibility).
Social values orientation
The dispositional tendency to respond to conflict settings in a proself or prosocial way; cooperators, for example, tend to make choices that benefit both parties in a conflict, whereas competitors act to maximize their own outcomes
Commons dilemma (or social trap)
A social dilemma when individuals can maximize their outcome by seeking personal goals rather than the collective goals, but if too many individuals act selfishly, then all members of the collective will experience substantial long-term losses.
Public goods dilemma
A social dilemma when one may or may not contribute any resources in support of a public good (such as a park or a highway system) but also cannot be excluded for failing to contribute.
Egocentrism
Giving oneself more responsibility for an outcome or event than is warranted; often indexed by comparing one’s own judgments of personal responsibility to judgments of responsibility allocated by others.
What are the two types of conflict (Morrill)
Task conflict (content conflict or substantive conflict) = Disagreements over issues that are relevant to the group’s recognized goals and procedures.
- Task conflict stems from disagreements about issues that are relevant to the group’s goals and outcomes. Even though such substantive conflicts help groups reach their goals, these disagreements can turn into personal, unpleasant conflicts.
Process conflict (or procedural conflict) = Disagreement over the methods the group should use to complete its basic tasks.
- Process conflicts occur when members do not agree on group strategies, policies, and methods.
