Characteristics of protracted, intractable conflict: Toward the development of a metaframework-I.

Coleman, Peter T.

doi:10.1207/s15327949pac0901_01

Cited by 232 publications

(234 citation statements)

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“…attitude change | psychological intervention I n recent years, the study of intractable conflicts has gained prominence within the social sciences (1,2). This type of conflict is very difficult to resolve peacefully because it is fueled by socio-psychological barriers that play a key role in this impasse (3,4).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradoxical thinking as a new avenue of intervention to promote peace

Hameiri

Porat

Bar‐Tal

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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In societies involved in an intractable conflict, there are strong socio-psychological barriers that contribute to the continuation and intractability of the conflict. Based on a unique field study conducted in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we offer a new avenue to overcome these barriers by exposing participants to a long-term paradoxical intervention campaign expressing extreme ideas that are congruent with the shared ethos of conflict. Results show that the intervention, although counterintuitive, led participants to express more conciliatory attitudes regarding the conflict, particularly among participants with center and right political orientation. Most importantly, the intervention even influenced participants' actual voting patterns in the 2013 Israeli general elections: Participants who were exposed to the paradoxical intervention, which took place in proximity to the general elections, reported that they tended to vote more for dovish parties, which advocate a peaceful resolution to the conflict. These effects were long lasting, as the participants in the intervention condition expressed more conciliatory attitudes when they were reassessed 1 y after the intervention. Based on these results, we propose a new layer to the general theory of persuasion based on the concept of paradoxical thinking.attitude change | psychological intervention I n recent years, the study of intractable conflicts has gained prominence within the social sciences (1, 2). This type of conflict is very difficult to resolve peacefully because it is fueled by socio-psychological barriers that play a key role in this impasse (3, 4). One major implication of these barriers is the tendency to freeze on conflict supporting societal beliefs and attitudes, and thus preserve hostility between the adversaries (5, 6). [Societal beliefs are defined as shared cognitions by society members that address themes and issues that society members are particularly occupied with, and which contribute to their sense of uniqueness (7).]Freezing is characterized by rigidity and close-mindedness, such that information incongruent with the reigning cognitiveemotional structure is likely to be ignored, rejected, misinterpreted, or forgotten, whereas congruent information is accepted as valid (8, 9; see also ref. 10). In fact, cognitive freezing encourages tunnel vision with respect to the conflict and the means to resolve it. Thus, one major challenge for scholars and peace activists is to overcome these deeply rooted socio-psychological barriers by unfreezing the held conflict supporting collective narratives. A successful unfreezing process should increase the individual's openness to previously contradictory views regarding the conflict, the adversary, and the in-group (5). With this challenge, a growing body of research has attempted to identify methods of intervention that can unfreeze deeply rooted conflict-supporting narratives among groups in conflict (11-16).In principle, most current interventions directly provide information th...

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Paradoxical thinking as a new avenue of intervention to promote peace

Hameiri

Porat

Bar‐Tal

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…The observation that destructive conflicts have a tendency to spread and that this increase in their range prolongs and sustains their negative effects has been made by various conflict scholars (Coleman, 2000(Coleman, , 2003Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998;Kriesberg, 2005;Zartman, 2005;Gray, Coleman, Putnam, 2007;Wessels, 2007). However, despite decades of research dedicated to the study of protracted conflict dynamics (see Azar, 1983Azar, , 1990Burgess and Burgess, 1996;Coleman, 2003Coleman, , 2004Coleman, , 2006Crocker, Hampson, andAall, 2004, 2005;Deutsch, 1973;Druckman, 2001;Kelman, 1997;Kriesberg, 2005;Zartman, 1989), to date, little is known about the basic mechanisms which account for the spreading of conflict, or the conditions which make it more or less likely to occur.…”

Section: Malignant Conflict and Pervasivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, despite decades of research dedicated to the study of protracted conflict dynamics (see Azar, 1983Azar, , 1990Burgess and Burgess, 1996;Coleman, 2003Coleman, , 2004Coleman, , 2006Crocker, Hampson, andAall, 2004, 2005;Deutsch, 1973;Druckman, 2001;Kelman, 1997;Kriesberg, 2005;Zartman, 1989), to date, little is known about the basic mechanisms which account for the spreading of conflict, or the conditions which make it more or less likely to occur. In fact, other than anecdotal accounts, there has been little or no scholarship directly conceptualizing and investigating the conditions and processes involved in conflicts becoming more pervasive.…”

Section: Malignant Conflict and Pervasivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In intractable conflicts the experience of threat associated with the conflict is so basic that the effects of the conflict spread and become pervasive […] The existential nature of these conflicts can impact everything from policy making, leadership, education, the arts, and scholarly inquiry to the most mundane decisions such as whether to shop and eat in public places (Coleman, 2003;p. 27 In Angola, during its war of nearly 40 years, it was not uncommon for people to say they couldn't plan for next year because of so much uncertainty.…”

Section: Background On Conflict Pervasivenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Understanding the spread of malignant conflict: A dynamical systems perspective.

Musallam

Coleman

Nowak³

2010

Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology

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"The other day I was taking a walk across the shore of Jaffa [a Palestinian town prior to 1948] and I was looking at the houses that now have been converted into these galleries […] (anonymous Palestinian, 2007).The pernicious effects of a conflict should not be judged solely by its intensity, its duration, or even its consequences. These criteria are not to be dismissed as unimportant, of course, but in focusing on them scholars and practitioners may be overlooking a feature of conflict that may prove to be more predictive of the long-term social landscape in which the conflict is embedded. As the above quote illustrates, the enmity associated with some social conflicts can spread and permeate previously unaffected aspects of community life; transforming them into triggers or symbols of resentment and hate. We see this occur when a walk at the shore and the sight of beautiful homes fuels a latent sense of outrage and once again turns person against person, group against group. The current paper aims to enhance our understanding of how negativity in conflict spreads, and to suggest some preliminary methods for measuring how this form of contagion occurs in conflicts overtime. Accordingly, the paper employs basic principles from dynamical systems theory (see , a theoretical perspective that informs how complex systems evolve and develop over time. These 2 principles can move the field forward in terms of the conceptualization and measurement of the spread of negativity in conflict over time.The paper includes the following sections: 1) a discussion of the characteristics of malignant social conflicts, 2) a review of the literature on psychological, social, and structural dimensions related to conflict pervasiveness, 3) findings from an exploratory study conducted with Israelis and Palestinians on the spread of destructive conflict, and 4) a discussion of the relevance of dynamical-systems theory for conceptualizing and measuring the spread of negativity in conflict.

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“…18 Hutchison andJohnson 2011. 19 Azar 1990;Coleman 2003;Crocker, Hampson, and Aall 2005. 20 Hadjipavlou 2007.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%