Medical Education 2012: 46: 935–942 Objectives  Intragroup conflicts often occur when people are called upon to collaborate in the accomplishment of a task. For example, when surgeons and nurses work together during an operation, conflicts may emerge because of differences in functional understanding. Whether these conflicts are beneficial or detrimental to team outcomes has been the source of much debate. From one perspective, a conflict that stems from differences in members’ functional understanding may enhance team members’ understanding and performance of the task at hand. By contrast, such a conflict may cause hostility, emotionality and distraction from actual task accomplishment. Methods  This study reviews findings on the relationships between intragroup conflict and team outcomes, discusses potential conflict resolution strategies for intragroup conflicts and explores how these link to the field of medical education. Results  Three primary types of conflict have been distinguished, involving, respectively, task‐, process‐ and relationship‐associated conflict. Both process conflict, or conflict about the logistics of task accomplishment, and relationship conflict, or conflict about interpersonal incompatibilities, have been shown to detract from effective team functioning. Task conflict, or conflict about the content of the task itself, is also generally negative for team functioning, but under certain conditions its negative effects may be minimised. For example, when teams can clearly separate task issues from relationship issues, task conflicts are less destructive for team outcomes. However, achieving such a separation in practice, and thereby realising the benefits of task conflict, is quite difficult to achieve. Conclusions  Intragroup conflicts pose a challenge to effective team functioning. In the education of medical professionals, effective training in conflict management skills and their application to specific team conflict dynamics, such as with reference to how to resolve task as opposed to relationship conflict, is critical.

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Representative negotiation affords a unique opportunity to regulate intergroup competition and conflict. Although past research has identified factors that shape representative negotiations, little is known about how such interpersonal representative negotiations influence broader intergroup relations. Here we investigate how the representative negotiation process can affect intergroup relations, irrespective of negotiation outcomes. In Experiment 1, competitive (as opposed to cooperative or neutral) communication by the outgroup representative decreased satisfaction with the outcome and increased outgroup derogation. In Experiment 2, the timing of the competitive behavior of the outgroup representative was shown to affect ensuing intergroup relations, such that early rather than late competition led to higher outcome satisfaction because of reduced outcome expectations, but also decreased trust in and perceived closeness of the outgroup. Together, these findings show that competitive behavior, especially early rather than late in the representative negotiation process increases outcome satisfaction, but hurts intergroup relations, regardless of the actual negotiation outcome.

Although cooperation among representatives in intergroup negotiation can improve intergroup relations, when cooperation in such competitive settings is attributed to strategic goals of the outgroup, it may actually harm intergroup relations. Here we investigate the possibility that representative's characteristics (prototypicality and competence) determine whether an outgroup representative's cooperation (as opposed to competition) improves or harms intergroup relations. Study 1 showed that a cooperative outgroup representative (compared to a competitive representative) produced more favorable perceptions of the entire outgroup, and triggered constructive behavioral tendencies towards the outgroup when the outgroup representative was seen as prototypical, yet decreased such constructive tendencies when the representative was seen as peripheral. Study 2 showed that the outgroup representative's cooperation triggered constructive behavioral tendencies only when the representative appeared as low in competence; when high in competence, the positive effect of representative cooperativeness on trust and constructive behavioral tendencies was mitigated. Implications for representative negotiation and intergroup relations are discussed.

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