Conflict Episode Research Articles

Intra-individual Psychological Experience and Dyadic Interaction during Task Conflict Episode

Intra-individual Psychological Experience and Dyadic Interaction during Task Conflict Episode

Future cooperation at work emerges when apologies are sincere: the importance of forgiveness and trust restoration

PurposeThe present study examines the nexus between workplace relationship conflict, perceived sincere apology, interpersonal forgiveness, trust restoration and future cooperation at work after a trust violation episode has occurred.Design/methodology/approachThe data for the analysis were collected from 226 employees using scenarios and survey methods and quantitative techniques were applied to analyze the data.FindingsThe results show that perceived sincerity of apology serves as a mediating variable in the link between workplace relationship conflict and interpersonal forgiveness. Interpersonal forgiveness is found to be positively related to future cooperation at work with the mediating role of trust restoration.Practical implicationsThe findings of the study have practical implications for strategy makers, human resource managers and practitioners interested in stimulating future cooperation at work after a trust violation episode has occurred. The study advocates that sincere apology and interpersonal forgiveness serve as an important link to recovering from trust violation damages and cultivating future cooperation at work after a relationship conflict has occurred.Originality/valueThe findings of the present study bring new insights on the role played by sincere apology and interpersonal forgiveness in facilitating trust restoration and future cooperation at work after a relationship conflict episode has occurred.

Reprint of: The psychological experience of intragroup conflict

Despite the centrality of differences as a driver of conflict, most of the empirical research on group conflict has focused on the group as a whole, paying little attention to the differing experiences of individuals during conflict—that is, the ways individuals perceive, make sense of, and emotionally experience a conflict episode. Although people process information about a conflict using the same general cognitive and emotional mechanisms, their personal characteristics (e.g., personality, cultural background), beliefs and motives (e.g., orientation toward conflict), and past experiences will influence how they make sense of what is occurring and their subsequent conflict behavior. Building on recent work that has taken a multi-level approach to understanding team conflict and drawing from related literature in social, cognitive, and personality psychology, we explicate an individual’s psychological experience of a conflict episode as a process by which individuals make sense of and emotionally experience what is happening, develop attitudes towards others in the group, and exchange and integrate knowledge about the conflict and others involved. We argue that a more nuanced understanding of the intraindividual experience of conflict generates important insight into understanding individual conflict behavior, helping us predict how people will behave in conflict situations and how conflict episodes will unfold. We conclude with implications for how to intervene to promote cooperative behavior and positive team outcomes, along with an agenda for future research.

The psychological experience of intragroup conflict

Despite the centrality of differences as a driver of conflict, most of the empirical research on group conflict has focused on the group as a whole, paying little attention to the differing experiences of individuals during conflict—that is, the ways individuals perceive, make sense of, and emotionally experience a conflict episode. Although people process information about a conflict using the same general cognitive and emotional mechanisms, their personal characteristics (e.g., personality, cultural background), beliefs and motives (e.g., orientation toward conflict), and past experiences will influence how they make sense of what is occurring and their subsequent conflict behavior. Building on recent work that has taken a multi-level approach to understanding team conflict and drawing from related literature in social, cognitive, and personality psychology, we explicate an individual’s psychological experience of a conflict episode as a process by which individuals make sense of and emotionally experience what is happening, develop attitudes towards others in the group, and exchange and integrate knowledge about the conflict and others involved. We argue that a more nuanced understanding of the intraindividual experience of conflict generates important insight into understanding individual conflict behavior, helping us predict how people will behave in conflict situations and how conflict episodes will unfold. We conclude with implications for how to intervene to promote cooperative behavior and positive team outcomes, along with an agenda for future research.

Profiles of attribution for work–family conflict episodes and their relation to negative emotions

SummaryMany employees commonly deal with situations where their work and family lives are in conflict. Yet, scholarly understanding of how these episodic experiences influence employees' cognitions (i.e., attributions) and emotions is still limited. Further, the emergent line of work–family research on attributions tends to adopt a variable‐centric approach by investigating the effects of attributional dimensions in isolation, thus precluding a holistic view of how individuals form profiles of attributions in response to work–family conflict episodes. To advance the work–family literature, we employed an experience sampling design across 12 days to investigate profiles of attributions and the resultant discrete negative emotions (e.g., guilt, shame, regret, anger, frustration, and resentment) associated with work–family conflict in full‐time employees with children. Multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) results revealed meaningfully different profiles of attributions that tended to occur in reaction to conflicts between work and family, with these profiles differing based upon direction of the conflict episode (i.e., work‐interfering‐with‐family [WIF] vs. family‐interfering‐with‐work [FIW]). Further, these attributional profiles, especially those associated with FIW episodes, differentially related to distinct negative emotions. Overall, our findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of profiles of attributions following work–family conflict episodes, with critical implications for affective well‐being.

Direct and indirect effects of contact quality and perceived cultural identification on conflict management styles in an American–Chinese context

From the theoretical perspectives of anxiety and uncertainty management and intergroup contact, this study examined U.S. American participants’ (N = 487) perceptions of conflict management styles with Chinese international students. Specifically, this study tested the indirect effects of participants’ perceptions of contact quality with the Chinese in general and strength of Chinese international students’ identification with home culture on conflict management styles through intergroup communication anxiety and social attraction. A conflict scenario was set in a typical class project context in which the American participants experienced a conflict with a Chinese international student. Results indicated that participants’ perceptions of contact quality with the Chinese and Chinese international students’ identification with their home culture had positive indirect effects on the problem‐solving style and negative indirect effects on the competing and avoiding styles through intergroup communication anxiety. In addition, quality of contact had positive direct and indirect effects on the accommodating style through social attraction of Chinese international students. Findings in this study generally indicated important ways in which contact experiences with outgroup members, intergroup communication anxiety, and outgroup membership influence specific communication behaviours during a conflict episode. Findings are discussed in light of prior literature and theories of intergroup contact, anxiety, and integrated threat.

Episodic work-family conflict and strain: A dynamic perspective.

A sizable body of research has established work-family conflict and its nomological network. Despite decades of research, we have yet to form a precise understanding of what happens when a conflict arises. The current research addresses this question using a growth modeling, episodic approach. We use stressor-strain and allostatic load theories to examine changes in daily patterns of psychological (fatigue, negative affect) and physiological (heart rate, blood pressure) strains that occur during and after a work-family conflict episode. We found some evidence for acute changes in psychological strain during and after work-to-family conflict episodes. Daily family-to-work conflict was associated with mixed reactions. State fatigue and heart rate decreased at the time of a family-to-work conflict, although state negative affect increased at the time of family-to-work conflict, and state fatigue increased more rapidly throughout the day after the second time family-to-work conflict was experienced. Additionally, we found evidence that state negative affect increases throughout the day as work-to-family conflict episodes accumulate. Daily family-to-work conflict accumulation was also associated with decreased fatigue, increased state negative affect, and increased systolic blood pressure. Lagged analyses showed some evidence that negative mood predicts work-family conflict occurrence within the next few hours. Implications for the theoretical relationship between work-family conflict and strain are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

A theory of work-family conflict episode processing

To clarify how work and non-work role conflicts are processed and produce psychological change, we propose an integrative theory of work-family conflict (WFC) episode processing. We clarify ambiguities around the meaning of WFC, overcome questionable research assumptions, make testable counter-normative predictions, reconcile “levels” and “episodes” WFC conceptions, and explain how WFC can even have a net positive effect for the person. In the model, a trigger event causes a perceived WF role incompatibility and a negative change in core affect, prompting either a scripted response or controlled sensemaking. In the latter, cognitive appraisals and secondary affect ensue, causing a choice of a coping/resolution response. Responses are reinforced/punished, and possibly, consciously evaluated. Episodes end with the potential storage of outputs in long-term memory. State inputs to an episode condition processing and memory storage. Stored episode outputs can thereafter become inputs to future episodes and/or cause longer-term change in role performance, satisfaction, and well-being. After describing these processes, we suggest new directions for WFC research and practice.

Activity Areas or Conflict Episode? Interpreting the Spatial Patterning of Lice and Fleas at the Precontact Yup’ik Site of Nunalleq (Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries AD, Alaska)

Archaeoentomological research at the precontact site of Nunalleq (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries AD), Southwest Alaska, has identified hundreds of lice and fleas that infested both the human inhabitants of the site and their canine companions. As lice are host specific, staying attached to the host’s hair or fur during the totality of their lifecycle, they are generally considered excellent indicators of activity areas. Fleas, however, are relatively less common in archaeological contexts and, since they are mobile and able to infest several different host species, their potential use in the spatial reconstruction of activities is more limited. At Nunalleq, the study of insects from the most recent archaeological contexts produced very different spatial distribution patterns for human lice, fleas, and dog lice. This article compares these archaeoentomological data with other datasets available for the site (carrion-feeding flies, human hair, fur, coprolites, projectile points, and pieces of clothing) with the aim of establishing the phenomena that produced the distinct spatial distributions observed.

Daring to Be Transformed: a Journey to the Epicenter of Conflicts

Elicitive Conflict Transformation: How can mediation go beyond resolving a conflict episode and transform the people behind issues and interests? In this article, Belgo-Canadian journalist Sophie Rousseau, trained mediator and student at the UNESCO Chair for Peace Studies in Innsbruck Austria, explores how elicitive conflict transformation can transform not only the conflict or the parties but also the mediator, questioning a core principle of mediation and journalism: neutrality.

Policy Conflict Framework

This essay introduces a Policy Conflict Framework to guide and organize theoretical, practical, and empirical research to fill the vacuum that surrounds policy conflicts. The framework centers on a conceptual definition of an episode of policy conflict that distinguishes between cognitive and behavioral characteristics. The cognitive characteristics of a policy conflict episode include divergence in policy positions among two or more actors, perceived threats from opponents’ policy positions, and unwillingness to compromise. These cognitive characteristics manifest in a range of behavioral characteristics (e.g., framing contests, lobbying, building networks). Episodes of policy conflicts are shaped by a policy setting, which consists of different levels of action where conflicts may emerge (political, policy subsystem and policy action situations), interpersonal and intrapersonal policy actor attributes, events, and the policy issue. In turn, the outputs and outcomes of policy conflicts produce feedback effects that shape the policy setting. This essay ends with an agenda for advancing studies of policy conflicts, both methodologically and theoretically.

Organisational Conflict Literature:A Review

The present research involves a review of organisational conflict literature in an integrated framework. In addition to exploring such basic issues related to organisational conflict as conceptual meaning and definitions of conflict, antecedent conditions or determinants of conflict, desirability of conflict, etc., the paper specifically focuses upon the internal dynamics of a conflict episode. More significantly, the paper highlights the fact that conflict can have either functional or pathological effects depending upon its management. The findings of various research studies analysed point to the fact that the levels of conflict as well as the styles of handling conflict can be suitably varied in different organisational situations with a view to enhancing organisational effectiveness.

Organisational Conflict Literature:A Review

The present research involves a review of 'organisational conflict' literature in an integrated framework. In addition to exploring such basic issues related to organisational conflict as conceptual meaning and definitions of conflict, antecedent conditions or determinants of conflict, desirability of conflict, etc., the paper specifically focuses upon the internal dynamics of a conflict episode. More significantly, the paper highlights the fact that conflict can have either functional or pathological effects depending upon its management. The findings of various research studies analysed point to the fact that the levels of conflict as well as the styles of handling conflict can be suitably varied in different organisational situations with a view to enhancing organisational effectiveness.

To Avoid or Not to Avoid: When Emotions Overflow

ABSTRACTThis study focuses on how postepisodic conflict avoidance is related to the emotional and behavioral reactions to a partner's destructive conflict behavior. The first hypothesis predicted that a partner's destructive behavior is positively related to postepisodic conflict avoidance when an individual becomes emotionally flooded and withdraws during an argument. Conversely, a partner's destructive behavior was expected to be negatively related to postepisodic conflict avoidance when an individual becomes emotionally flooded and reciprocates the destructive behavior during an argument. A path analysis of the accounts of 182 undergraduate participants about a recent conflict episode supported the second hypothesis but not the first. However, results indicate other positive paths between a partner's destructive behavior and postepisodic conflict avoidance. Limitations and future research directions are discussed. This study extends the anger avoidance model and also advances understanding of destructive communication processes.

Gender Differences in Support for the Use of Military Force in Cross-National Perspective: The War System, Modernization, and the Universal Logics of Military Action

There is ample evidence from the US context that women, although hardly pacifist, are less supportive of the use of military force than are men. However, the evidence is largely restricted to one conflict episode (the first Gulf War), and there is almost no cross-national evidence that would allow us to evaluate important hypotheses (especially concerning the universality of gender differences). In this paper, I aim to close this gap in the evidence. The most important finding is this: Gender differences vary substantially across societies and within a number of international conflicts. The data therefore cast doubt on any theory that would predict constant gender differences, most importantly any biological explanation, but also the version of Goldstein’s hypothesis that relates universally gendered war socialization to the pervasiveness of the “war system”.

Elicitive Conflict Mapping: A Practical Tool for Peacework

This article presents the tool of elicitive conflict mapping (ECM), developed by Wolfgang Dietrich (2011, 2013, unpublished) at the Innsbruck UNESCO Chair and MA Program in Peace Studies, which seeks to operationalize the philosophy of transrational peace and the art of elicitive conflict work. The art of elicitive conflict work is based on the guiding principle that elicitive transformation does not develop or offer a content solution for the conflict episode, but it provides a safe space for the parties, in which they can work on changes in their relationships along the horizons of their own intelligibility. In this context, the practical relevance of ECM is not the creation of prescriptive methods or recipes, because transrationality and elicitive work exclude such instruments, but to support conflicting parties in finding orientation and recognizing new and concrete courses of action in their own contexts. Read in conjunction with Dietrich’s article in this very same issue and methodologically inspired by mind mapping, this contribution surveys practical ways in which elicitive conflict workers can find a point of entry into conflict analysis and seek guidance in the complex reality of themes, layers and levels. The aim is to shed light on the steps that elicitive workers and facilitation teams can take in order to create possibilities and courses of action that enable the recovery of the dynamic equilibrium of the conflictive system.

Antagonistic and Nonantagonistic Dialectical Contradictions in Organizational Conflict

This study examined the perceived importance of five dialectical contradictions to conflict episodes for 40 organizational employees. Using a revised version of the Retrospective Interview Technique and questionnaire data, organizational employees were asked to recall important conflict episodes, coded for issue type, over a 1-year time period. Following in-depth questions about the conflicts, a questionnaire was administered that asked participants to rate five dialectical contradictions according to their importance for each conflict episode. A second questionnaire was also administered that asked participants to determine if conflicts were dialectical (antagonistic and nonantagonistic) or nondialectical, relative to each conflict episode. Results reveal that all five dialectical contradictions were rated in the moderate range of importance to organizational conflict episodes. Ratings for differences among the five themes were significant for 3 of the 12 conflict issues identified. Results from the second questionnaire reveal that 49.9% of all conflicts were dialectical (15.7% antagonistic, 34.2% nonantagonistic), and 51.1% were nondialectical. Implications for future research are discussed.

Conflict, Climate, and Cells: A Disaggregated Analysis

We conduct a geographically and temporally disaggregated empirical analysis of civil conflict at the sub-national level in Africa over the period 1997-2011. Our units of observation are cells of 1 degree of latitude by 1 degree of longitude. We exploit within-year variation in the timing of weather shocks and in the growing season of different crops, as well as spatial variation in crop cover, to construct an original measure of shocks that are relevant for agricultural production. Employing a new drought index we show that negative climate shocks which occur during the growing season of the main crop cultivated in the cell have a sizeable and persistent effect on conflict incidence. We also use state-of-the-art spatial econometric techniques to test for the presence of temporal and spatial spillovers in conflict, and we find both to be sizeable and highly statistically significant. Exploiting variation in the type of conflict episode, we find that the impact of climate shocks on conflict is particularly significant when focusing on outcomes such as battles and violence against civilians. Our estimates can be used to predict how future warming scenarios affect the prevalence and diffusion of conflict.

War Signals: A Theory of Trade, Trust and Conflict

We construct a dynamic theory of civil conflict hinging on inter-ethnic trust and trade. The model economy is inhabitated by two ethnic groups. Inter-ethnic trade requires imperfectly observed bilateral investments and one group has to form beliefs on the average propensity to trade of the other group. Since conflict disrupts trade, the onset of a conflict signals that the aggressor has a low propensity to trade. Agents observe the history of conflicts and update their beliefs over time, transmitting them to the next generation. The theory bears a set of testable predictions. First, war is a stochastic process whose frequency depends on the state of endogenous beliefs. Second, the probability of future conflicts increases after each conflict episode. Third, accidental conflicts that do not reflect economic fundamentals can lead to a permanent breakdown of trust, plunging a society into a vicious cycle of recurrent conflicts (a war trap). The incidence of conflict can be reduced by policies abating cultural barriers, fostering inter-ethnic trade and human capital, and shifting beliefs. Coercive peace policies such as peacekeeping forces or externally imposed regime changes have instead no persistent effects.

Coping with defeat: acute glucocorticoid and forebrain responses to social defeat vary with defeat episode behaviour

Individuals vary in the way in which they cope with stressful situations. It has been suggested that ‘active’ coping behaviour, characterised by aggression and territorial control, is more effective in moderating the stress associated with social defeat than ‘passive’ coping behaviour, as characterised by immobility, decreased reactivity, and low aggression. We used the rodent ‘resident/intruder’ paradigm to determine whether individual differences in coping behaviour modulate the acute adrenocortical response to social defeat. During the 10 min conflict episode, behaviours displayed by the intruder were recorded and subsequently scored. Intruders that engaged in large numbers of fights and/or frequently used physical structures to block the resident's approach (a behaviour referred to as ‘guarding’), displayed smaller corticosterone responses to defeat than other intruders. Corticosterone responses to defeat were unrelated to a measure of coping style preferences (defensive burying test) obtained prior to the defeat encounter. We further chose to investigate the neurobiological basis of this observation by comparing the patterns of defeat-induced neuronal activation in the forebrains of intruders that displayed high versus low numbers of defensive behaviours during the defeat episode. The results of this analysis indicated that ‘low fight’ and ‘low guard’ intruders, i.e. those that achieved a fight or a guard score below the 20th percentile, had significantly higher numbers of Fos-positive neurons in forebrain regions such as the medial prefrontal cortex and the amygdala than did control animals exposed to an empty resident's cage. In summary, the present data suggest that ‘active’ coping behaviour is associated with both a smaller adrenocortical response and a lower level of ‘neural activation’ following social defeat. This outcome differs from that of earlier studies, a difference that we suggest is due to the fact that the present study is the first to assess coping on the basis of behaviour actually displayed during the conflict interaction.