Emotions in attacker-defender conflicts

Abstract

The distinction between attackers and defenders might help refine the understanding of the role of emotions in conflicts. Here, we briefly discuss differences between attackers and defenders in terms of appraisals, action tendencies, emotional preferences, and brain activities. Finally, we outline how attackers and defenders may differ in their response to emotion-based interventions that aim to promote conflict resolution.

The Role of Empathy and Compassion in Conflict Resolution

“…In other studies, loving-kindness meditation was shown to increase implicit and explicit measures of positive affect toward neutral strangers (Hutcherson, Seppala, & Gross, 2008) and to promote the enforcement of fairness-related norms in economic interactions (Weng et al, 2013). Extending this research to situations of interpersonal conflict, recent preliminary evidence from our laboratory showed that several weeks of regular compassion training, but not an active control training consisting of language learning, reduced schadenfreude toward a person with whom participants were in conflict (Cernadas Curotto, Sander, Halperin, & Klimecki, 2018).…”

“…Pertaining to the question of generalizability, it seems that short-term loving-kindness or mindfulness interventions can reduce racial biases toward the population targeted in the training in intergroup situations (Lueke & Gibson, 2015; Stell & Farsides, 2016), while compassion training over several days can generalize to people who were not targeted in the training in both interpersonal (Cernadas Curotto et al, 2018) and intergroup contexts (Kang et al, 2014).…”