The influence of the situation in interparty conflict

Abstract

The psychological approach to the study of interpersonal conflict has been guided by a paradigm which emphasizes characteristics of individuals as the primary source of conflict. This model assumes some degree of responseconsistency across situations and roles resulting from general dispositions toward the resolution of conflicts. Representative of this approach are conceptual analogies that have been drawn between motivationally-derived interpersonal orientations toward the resolution of interpersonal conflicts and preferred orientations for national representatives toward the resolution of international conflicts (see Gladstone, 1962), and correlations obtained between scales designed to measure each of these variables (see Scott, 1965, for a review of this literature). The contrasting situational approach posits response-variation concomitant with changes in the situation or role-requirements. The importance of situational parameters as the primary source of interpersonal or intergroup conflicts has been emphasized by Blake and Mouton (1962) who have used the term &dquo;psychodynamic fallacy&dquo; to refer to the incorrect attribution of interpersonal or group behavior to the personalities of individuals. (Sherif and Sherif, 1965, take a similar position.) These conclusions were reached on the basis of observations of conflict behavior in large-scale field studies of intergroup relations. In this setting the influence of &dquo;personality&dquo; variables might indeed be moderated. Coser's (1956) distinction between &dquo;nonrealistic&dquo; (conflict in the service of drive-reduction) and &dquo;realistic&dquo;(the concomitance of scarce resources and incompatible goals) conflict parallels the distinction between &dquo;personality&dquo; and situation as sources of interparty conflict. According to Coser, the importance of these factors in the resolution of conflicts is in part a function of the nature of the social structure. For example, the prevalence of nonrealistic conflict in a society depends, inter alia, on the rigidity of the social structure.More recently, a paradigm which represents a more analytic approach to the study of conflict behavior has guided investigations of personality and situational effects. Numerous investigators over the past few years have used two-person laboratory games to explore the relative effects of several variables manipulated simultaneously. While several of these studies have demonstrated relationships between pre-experimentally assessed attitudes and behavior in dyadic conflict situations (e.g., Crowne, 1966;Druckman, 1967;Terhune, 1968), the evidence in general indicates that subject variables are not strongly predictive of conflict behavior. This failure to obtain relationships has been noted by a number of investigators (e.g., Bartos, 1967;Bixenstine and Blundell, 1966;Terhune, 1968;Wrightsman, 1966). In addition, the failure to replicate obtained relationships was made at CARLETON UNIV on June 15, 2015 jcr.sagepub.com Downloaded from 524 apparent by Terhune (1968Terhune...

The Impact of Time Pressure in Negotiation: A Meta‐analysis

“…Time pressure and competitive behavior thus make agreement less likely, while time pressure and cooperative behavior make agreement more likely. Druckman (1971) concurs that agreements are less likely when the opponent is competitive but argues that as deadlines become closer, cooperation is increased. Similarly, propose that unlike under low time pressure, under high time pressure negotiators mismatch their opponent's offers.…”

e-Mediation: Evaluating the Impacts of an Electronic Mediator on Negotiating Behavior

“…It was not present in the separate NSS condition and its absence may have accounted for the low number of integrative statements made by these negotiators. (4) (see Druckman, 1971, for a review of other experiments on communication opportunities. )…”

Review Section : Mediation

“…(To cite an extreme example, one probably would expect the mediation technique used successfully in mediating a negotiation over a bridewealth payment in Kenya [Abrahams, 1968] be less than successful in mediating the Arab-Israeli dispute [Butler, 1978].) While these questions are numerous, they can be addressed quite methodically via a matrix (Table 2) The categorization in Table 1 again provides the left column in the matrix, and the bargaining literature delineates many of the relevant properties of the negotiation context row (Bartos, 1974;Chertkoff and Esser, 1976;Druckman, 1971;Morley and Stephenson, 1977;Rubin and Brown, 1975;Strauss, 1978). Of these, Strauss (1978) and Druckman (1971) offer two, and perhaps the most thorough, listings which can serve as the initial bases for the rows.…”