Conflict Processing Research Articles

Passing‐yielding intention estimation during lane change conflict: A semantic‐based Bayesian inference method

AbstractIntention estimation has been widely studied in lane change scenarios, which explains a vehicle's behaviour and implies its future motion. However, in dense traffic, lane‐changing is more tactical and interactive. Due to the conflict between merging vehicles and adjacent vehicles, driving intentions become interdependent which fuses passing and yielding. In addition, lane change occurs without a fixed location. Drivers should be aware of each other's intentions along conflict process, and take instant responses. To address these challenges, this paper proposes semantic‐based interactive intention estimation (SIIE), to understand driving intentions during lane change conflict. The problem is addressed by combining driving semantics with probability inference model based on dynamic Bayesian network (DBN). Firstly, the DBN is modelled for the interaction process with Condition‐Intention‐Behaviour relationships. Secondly, the semantics are extracted from the lane change conflict and are inferred with observation methods. Thirdly, SIIE is trained and verified with real‐world driving data. The intention estimation results are demonstrated, and then utilized for multi‐modal motion identification and trajectory prediction. Lane change in dense traffic requires interactive cognition of driving intentions, the findings of this research shall inspire future studies into related scenarios, and promote interactive driving technologies.

The role of conflict processing in multisensory perception: behavioural and electroencephalography evidence.

To form coherent multisensory perceptual representations, the brain must solve a causal inference problem: to decide if two sensory cues originated from the same event and should be combined, or if they came from different events and should be processed independently. According to current models of multisensory integration, during this process, the integrated (common cause) and segregated (different causes) internal perceptual models are entertained. In the present study, we propose that the causal inference process involves competition between these alternative perceptual models that engages the brain mechanisms of conflict processing. To test this hypothesis, we conducted two experiments, measuring reaction times (RTs) and electroencephalography, using an audiovisual ventriloquist illusion paradigm with varying degrees of intersensory disparities. Consistent with our hypotheses, incongruent trials led to slower RTs and higher fronto-medial theta power, both indicative of conflict. We also predicted that intermediate disparities would yield slower RTs and higher theta power when compared to congruent stimuli and to large disparities, owing to the steeper competition between causal models. Although this prediction was only validated in the RT study, both experiments displayed the anticipated trend. In conclusion, our findings suggest a potential involvement of the conflict mechanisms in multisensory integration of spatial information. This article is part of the theme issue 'Decision and control processes in multisensory perception'.

Representation of political conflicts in history textbooks

This research scrutinizes the representation of political conflict within contemporary Indonesian history textbooks. The research question is about how the contemporary history textbooks present political conflicts in Indonesian historiography for the younger generation within the frame of political interests, nation-building, and the demand of conflict reconciliation and transformation. Discourse Historical Analysis was used as the research method, particularly in investigating conflict representation from the analysis of nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivation, and intensification. The object is Indonesian History textbook used in schools. Data analysis techniques are carried out with discourse historical analysis techniques through analysis of nominations, predicates, arguments, and perspectives. The findings show that historical conflicts in the textbooks are represented in two forms of historical narrative logic. The first is a simple plot and heroism narrative logic to present the conflicts in Indonesia from 1945 to 1965. The second is a cooperative-constructive narrative logic that emphasizes the conflict reconciliation rather than the conflictual process in presenting the conflicts in Indonesia from 1965 to 1998. Those logics consist of the binary system and schizophrenic feeling that shows the confusion of the historians in narrating conflict within the history textbook. Therefore, the chance to take advantage of the textbook in supporting conflict transformation in Indonesia can be hard to achieve. The historian has to find an alternative approach to solve the problem of conflict representation within the Indonesian history textbook. This alternative approach is carried out as an effort to support the transformation of conflict in Indonesian society.

Disruptions of salience network during uncertain anticipation of conflict control in anxiety

BackgroundAnxiety has been characterized by disrupted processing of conflict control, while little is known about anticipatory processing of conflicts in anxiety. Anticipation is the key factor in both anxiety and cognitive control, especially under uncertain conditions. The current study therefore examined neurocomputational mechanisms of uncertain anticipation of conflict control in anxiety. MethodsTwenty-six participants with high-trait anxiety and twenty-nine low-trait anxiety participants completed a cue-flanker task with functional magnetic resonance imaging. The hierarchical drift diffusion model (HDDM) was used to measure the cognitive computations during the task. To identify the neurocomputational mechanism of anticipatory control in anxiety, mediation analysis and dynamic causal modelling (DCM) analysis were conducted to examine the relationship between functional connectivity of brain networks and the parameters of HDDM. ResultsWe found influences of regulatory signals from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex to dorsal anterior cingulate cortex on decision threshold in low-trait anxiety (LTA), but not in high-trait anxiety (HTA), especially for the condition with uncertain cues. The results indicate deficient top-down anticipatory control of upcoming conflicts in anxious individuals. DCM and HDDM analyses revealed that lower decision threshold was associated with higher intrinsic connectivity of salience network (SN) in anxious individuals, suggesting that dysfunctional SN disrupts anticipation of conflict control under uncertainty in anxiety. ConclusionsOur results suggest hyperfunction of the SN underlies the deficient information accumulation during uncertain anticipation of upcoming conflicts in anxiety. Our findings shed new light on the mechanisms of anticipation processing and the psychopathology of anxiety.

Computational approaches to conflict research from modeling and data to computational diplomacy

This paper offers an account of our own efforts to draw on computational methods to study conflict processes at the macro level. During a first phase, we relied on agent-based modeling in order to capture the complexity of system-level processes. This research yielded a number of publications, but less by way of influence on substantive research and policy making. Therefore, we decided to shift our main focus away from agent-based modeling to spatial computation, which allow for a more direct empirical validation of our results. This second phase of research includes the collection and integration of large amounts of spatiotemporally structured data, which we analyze with more conventional econometric tools. To advance the field of computational diplomacy, we recommend that future search combines agent-based modeling with rigorous empirical validation through the utilization of spatial computation.

Operationalizing the problem of political alienation for housing studies

This paper adds to a revitalization of alienation as a political problem in the field of housing studies, pointing us to property relations that fragment tenants from acting together with other residents in similar positions. Analyzing ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in Basel with tenants facing mass cancellations of rental contracts, it operationalizes the problem of alienation to more closely examine the interplay of property relations and the subjective or collective experience of tenants: The consolidation of landlords’ interests through complicit legal frameworks fragments tenants not only by producing insecurities within affected blocks. This consolidation also drives processes of individualization and conflict between fellow tenants and between tenants and their union, as well as harms tenants’ belief in (local) political institutions. On the other hand, experiencing these fragmentations and the widespread inhibition of people to act together with others is, in some cases, the most sorrowful aspect for tenants facing rental contract cancellations in Basel. With the proposed understanding of alienation, the paper adds to two debates in housing studies: Outlining alienating property relations, it first foregrounds institutional constraints regarding the question of why many residents do not confront landlords’ plans. Secondly, political alienation highlights the sorrow that can stem from the inhibition of collective action. Here the paper contributes to the debate around displacement and un-homing, showing them to be much more than the loss of original habitat. Lastly, the paper responds to the query of how to empirically apply the theoretically driven concept of alienation by moving questions of collective agency to the fore in housing and alienation theory.

Eğitim Yönetimde Örgütsel Problem Unsurlarına Bütüncül Bakış

In this study, where a holistic view of the organizational problem elements in education management is examined, the conflict processes that we encounter as the main problem experienced in organizational processes will be addressed. Although the principles of management do not change according to the country, according to the region, the forms of management change. Every manager has different ways and methods in terms of making decisions, planning, implementing them, mobilizing his subordinates, motivating and controlling them. If there are significant differences between the manager and his subordinates on these issues, they may be a cause of Deconfliction. For this reason, the first job that a newly appointed manager should do in an organization is to explain his own management style to his subordinates. Members of organizations that have come together to perform various tasks need these resources in order to perform their tasks more effectively and fully achieve their goals Decently. If these resources are not enough for everyone and the side that will get these resources will cause the loss of the other side, a conflict will arise. Human relations are of great importance in determining the organizational climate. It is a fact that general attitude and understanding will have an increasing or decreasing effect on conflicts. If the principal and the vice principal are in a conflict between themselves in a school and they do not show an attempt to Deconstruct it, it is obvious that teachers will not hesitate to get into a conflict either. By creating an effective school climate, the school administrator can increase teachers' job satisfaction and motivation and help develop a healthy school personality. An important source of conflict for all social systems is the fact that the responsibilities and spheres of influence of individuals in the system are not clearly determined or overlap with each other. In general, verbal determination of the powers and responsibilities of individuals in non-formal groups and written determination of the powers and responsibilities of individuals in formal groups will prevent the emergence of many conflicts, especially role uncertainty. Keywords: Educational Institutions, Educational Management, Organizational Problem Elements

More proactive but less efficient: The effect of trait self-control on emotion regulation and its neural mechanisms

Self-control is important for maintaining good health, acquiring achievement and happiness, and improving environmental adaptability. Trait self-control can affect the processing of emotional conflict in daily life and is associated with successful emotional regulation. In this study, the task functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology was adopted to explore the emotion regulation processing and neural mechanism of individuals with different trait self-control levels. The results showed that: (a) Individuals with high self-control experienced the lower intensity of negative emotion when viewing negative emotional pictures than individuals with low self-control, showing spontaneous emotion regulation and significantly increased activity of executive control and emotion regulation networks of the brain; (b) Individuals with low self-control were more sensitive to negative emotion, and their emotion regulation effect under external instructions was better than that of individuals with high self-control. This suggests that individuals with high trait self-control were adept at using proactive control strategies to spontaneously regulate emotional conflict and experienced less emotional conflict accordingly. However, they were less effective than low self-control individuals in resolving emotional conflicts. These findings provide an important basis for our understanding of the nature and neural mechanism of self-control.

Discovering the mesoscale for chains of conflict.

Conflicts, like many social processes, are related events that span multiple scales in time, from the instantaneous to multi-year development, and in space, from one neighborhood to continents. Yet, there is little systematic work on connecting the multiple scales, formal treatment of causality between events, and measures of uncertainty for how events are related to one another. We develop a method for extracting causally related chains of events that addresses these limitations with armed conflict. Our method explicitly accounts for an adjustable spatial and temporal scale of interaction for clustering individual events from a detailed data set, the Armed Conflict Event & Location Data Project. With it, we discover a mesoscale ranging from a week to a few months and tens to hundreds of kilometers, where long-range correlations and nontrivial dynamics relating conflict events emerge. Importantly, clusters in the mesoscale, while extracted from conflict statistics, are identifiable with mechanism cited in field studies. We leverage our technique to identify zones of causal interaction around conflict hotspots that naturally incorporate uncertainties. Thus, we show how a systematic, data-driven, and scalable procedure extracts social objects for study, providing a scope for scrutinizing and predicting conflict and other processes.

THE MAIN STAGES OF DEPLOYMENT OF HYBRID AGGRESSION BY THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION AGAINST UKRAINE

A historical analysis of the hybrid aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which became the most dramatic event in the recent history of Ukraine, at the beginning of the third decade of independence, was conducted. The open armed actions of the Russian Federation against Ukraine caused new challenges not only to the national security of Ukraine, but also to the security of the world in general. Currently, the term "hybrid war" best characterizes the actions of the Russian Federation in relation to Ukraine. It is this type of warfare that combines not only military means, but also informational, economic, political, diplomatic, and humanitarian means. At the same time, the «hybrid wars» of the Russian Federation use many tools, starting from the spread of panic rumors to the mobilization of the potential of the church, agents of influence in the economy, political bodies or the use of so-called soft power. The article analyzes the step-by-step process of the military conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, starting with the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, the open Russian-Ukrainian armed confrontation in the east of the Ukrainian state, and ending with a large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Within each of the stages, separate periods are distinguished, the evolution of which determined and changed the motives of the behavior of the Russian Federation and led to the beginning of hostilities. The Russian-Ukrainian war requires a complex scientific understanding, study and generalization of the experience of conducting military operations in the largest armed conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War. Conclusions were made regarding the need to consolidate the efforts of the EU, the USA and other democratic states as a guarantee of preventing hybrid aggression by states that act from the position of force, rather than the force of law.

비장애 형제자매로서의 경험에 대한 자문화기술지

This auto-ethnography describes the process of conflict and reconciliation I experienced as a non-disabled sister of a disabled sibling. For that, I analyze diverse personal documents, including diaries, notes, and text (SNS) messages with others, after having them reviewed by my family members for better credibility. The primary findings are as follows: first, my sibling’s positive perspective motivated my academic achievements by strengthening my resilience. Second, the disparity between my high-achieving self in my 20s and another self as a sister of a disabled person created a long-lasting sense of ambivalence, decreasing the visibility of the disabled family member. Last, I came under a ‘yoke’ that society and my parents gave, which pressured me to take life-long care of my sister. These findings shed light on under-researched aspects of the life of non-disabled sisters and brothers in South Korea, challenging the pathological stereotype of families with disabled members.

Declining to Provide or Continue Requested Life-Sustaining Treatment: Experience With a Hospital Resolving Conflict Policy.

In 2015, the major critical care societies issued guidelines outlining a procedural approach to resolving intractable conflict between healthcare professionals and surrogates over life-sustaining treatments (LST). We report our experience with a resolving conflict procedure. This was a retrospective, single-centre cohort study of ethics consultations involving intractable conflict over LST. The resolving conflict process was initiated eleven times for ten patients over 2,015 ethics consultations from 2000 to 2020. In all cases, the ethics committee recommended withdrawal of the contested LST. In seven cases, the patient died or was transferred or a legal injunction was obtained before completion of the process. In the four cases in which LST was withdrawn, the time from ethics consultation to withdrawal of LST was 24.8 ± 12.2 days. Healthcare provider and surrogate were often distressed during the process, sometimes resulting in escalation of conflict and legal action. In some cases, however, surrogates appeared relieved that they did not have to make the final decision regarding LST. Challenges regarding implementation included the time needed for process completion and limited usefulness in emergent situations. Although it is feasible to implement a due process approach to conflict over LST, there are factors that limit the procedure's usefulness.

Ripeness Levels and Their Relations with the Success of the Negotiation Method: CPP-NPA, TTP, IRA

Conflict arises for a variety of reasons. Parties may fail to achieve clear success in the conflict process and achieve their goals. In such a situation, conflict causes the parties to reach the mutually hurting stalemate. The realization of this situation by the parties signifies the ripening of the conflict. In a ripening conflict, alternative methods come to the fore. At this point, one of the preferred tools is the negotiation method. A similar process takes place in low-intensity conflicts between states and terrorist organizations. After prolonged conflicts, contacts between the parties occur and thus negotiations are initiated. However, the negotiation method isn’t always end with successful, and it is possible to return to the conflict environment at different phases of the negotiation. This study argues that there are different levels of ripeness. At the same time, it is evaluated that there is a significant relationship between the levels of ripeness and the probability of success of the negotiation method.

Gender-Based Violence in Bosnia From Conflict to The Post-Conflict Setting

This review article aims to investigate gender-based violence in wartime and post-war Bosnia. While the existing literature exclusively focuses on the relationship between gender and nationalism, this article rather addresses the psychological and economic violence against women in Bosnia. By adopting a continuum approach, this study uncovers how different forms of violence against women interact with each other from the conflict to the post-conflict contexts. Through a literature survey, this study depicts how gender-based violence has been reproduced from past to present in the case of Bosnia. In discussing gender-based violence, it dwells upon the intersections between mass rapes, forced pregnancy and traumatization. As the main argument, this article contends that sexual violence during the war triggered the spiral of violence and further led to stigmatization and marginalization of these women in the post-war context. It is especially argued that the persistent public stigma is the most blatant manifestation of psychological violence against female rape victims. In addition, it is shown that the overlapping processes of conflict, patriarchy and neoliberalization have led to a series of economic injustices, such as, in the form of the dispossession, poverty and exclusion of women in Bosnia. This article overall suggests establishing linkages between sexual, psychological and economic violence against women during the conflict and post-conflict processes.

Experimental studies of conflict: Challenges, solutions, and advice to junior scholars

Conflict plays a profound role in the lives of individuals, organizations, and entire societies – and has become an ever-expanding area of interdisciplinary research. This special issue brings together five new papers examining conflict antecedents and processes using the experimental method. In the following introduction, we consider the challenges inherent to studying conflict using experiments and the various approaches that researchers have developed to overcome some of those challenges. In doing so, we present a high-level taxonomy of successful experimental approaches to the study of conflict and highlight the manner in which the papers in the Special issue exemplify each of these approaches. We conclude with several pieces of specific advice to researchers seeking to make robust and impactful contributions to this area.

Monitoring Urban Change in Conflict from the Perspective of Optical and SAR Satellites: The Case of Mariupol, a City in the Conflict between RUS and UKR

Modern armed conflicts can cause serious humanitarian disasters, and remote sensing technology is critical in monitoring war crimes and assessing post-war damage. In this study, a constrained energy minimization algorithm incorporating the feature bands (IFB-CEM) is designed to detect urban burning areas in optical images. Due to the difficulty of obtaining the ground survey data of the battlefield, the dual-polarization normalized coherence index (DPNCI) is designed based on the multi-temporal synthetic aperture radar (SAR) image, and the quantitative inversion and evaluation of the destruction of urban architecture are combined with the public images on the Internet. The results show that the burning area is widely distributed in the armed conflict region, and the distribution is most concentrated around the Azovstal steel and iron works. The burning area reached its peak around 22 March, and its change is consistent with the conflict process in time and space. About 79.2% of the buildings in the city were severely damaged or completely destroyed, and there was a significant correlation with burning exposure. The results of this study show that publicly available medium-resolution remote sensing data and Internet information have the ability to respond quickly to the damage assessment of armed conflict and can provide preliminary reference information for dealing with humanitarian disasters.

A revised diffusion model for conflict tasks.

The recently developed diffusion model for conflict tasks (DMC) Ulrich et al. (Cognitive Psychology, 78, 148-174, 2015) provides a good account of data from all standard conflict tasks (e.g., Stroop, Simon, and flanker tasks) within a common evidence accumulation framework. A central feature of DMC's processing dynamics is that there is an initial phase of rapid accumulation of distractor evidence that is then selectively withdrawn from the decision mechanism as processing continues. We argue that this assumption is potentially troubling because it could be viewed as implying qualitative changes in the representation of distractor information over the time course of processing. These changes suggest more than simple inhibition or suppression of distractor information, as they involve evidence produced by distractor processing "changing sign" over time. In this article, we (a) develop a revised DMC (RDMC) whose dynamics operate strictly within the limits of inhibition/suppression (i.e., evidence strength can change monotonically, but cannot change sign); (b) demonstrate that RDMC can predict the full range of delta plots observed in the literature (i.e., both positive-going and negative-going); and (c) show that the model provides excellent fits to Simon and flanker data used to benchmark the original DMC at both the individual and group level. Our model provides a novel account of processing differences across Simon and flanker tasks. Specifically, that they differ in how distractor information is processed on congruent trials, rather than incongruent trials: congruent trials in the Simon task show relatively slow attention shifting away from distractor information (i.e., location) while complete and rapid attention shifting occurs in the flanker task. Our new model highlights the importance of considering dynamic interactions between top-down goals and bottom-up stimulus effects in conflict processing.

Mixed Methods in an Evolving Research Program on Diaspora Entrepreneurs and Their Mobilizations

Scholarship at the intersection of migration studies and international relations has been increasingly interested in diasporas in world politics, yet analysis integrating relevant literature in systematic ways through rigorous empirical methods has been largely missing. How can mixed-methods techniques contribute to the evolution of a relatively new research program, such as the study of diaspora mobilizations in conflict processes? How can these techniques identify data patterns that could help establish meaningful analytical categories and factor in multi-sited complexity? Based on a large-scale European Research Council migration project "Diasporas and Contested Sovereignty," this Research Note offers a pathway for future scholarship on how to systematically do so. It presents a rich theoretically informed coding procedure that systematizes the analysis of four researchers working across conflict-generated diasporas in multiple host-countries and linked to conflicts in multiple countries of origin. Correspondence and cluster analyses are used to isolate profiles of diaspora entrepreneurs. Procedures used early in the project's life-cycle helped later to design a unique survey and inform a deeper comparative causal analysis, thus creating a coherent conversation among different research products.

Exploring Effects of Age on Conflict Processing in the Light of Practice in a Large-Scale Dataset

ABSTRACT Introduction The possible decline of cognitive functions with age has been in the focus of cognitive research in the last decades. The present study investigated effects of aging on conflict processing in a big dataset of a Stroop-inspired online training task. Methods We focused on the temporal dynamics of conflict processing in the light of task practice by means of inspecting delta plots and Lorenz-interference curves to gain insights on a process level. Results The results indicate a relatively constant increase of cognitive conflict over the course of adulthood and a decrease with practice. Furthermore, the latency of the automatic processing of conflicting information relative to the controlled processing of task-relevant information decreases relatively constantly with age. This effect is moderated by practice, that is, the relative latency of the automatic processing decreases less with age at high practice levels. Conclusion As such, practice seems to be able to partially counteract age-related differences in conflict processing, on a process level.

An Appraisal of Nigeria Peace Keeping Process in Darfur –Sudan

The art of external intervention as a strategy for conflict resolution and crisis management has been prominent among nations of the world. In Africa, Nigeria has been championing the course of peace in this respect since her independence. Peace keeping is a third party intervention which operates with a set of guiding principles that include the consent of the parties in conflict, impartiality and non use of force except on self defense. Again, foreign policy of any nation serves as a mirror of its domestic reality. It begins with identification and articulation of national interests. Nation’s interest represents and serves the principal consideration in the formulation and execution of national policies especially in international relations. It’s against this background that Nigeria maintained that ‘Africa is the centre peace and security’ in her foreign policy. Consequently, this paper is focused on the appraisal of Nigeria peace keeping efforts in Darfur region of Sudan from 2004-2015. Content analyses were used and system theory was adopted as a foundation to the research. Some of findings made are: 1. Nigeria’s much engagements in peacekeeping operation are affecting her domestic affair. 2. Nigeria lack understanding of the nature of the conflict among parties, various forces at play and psychology/beliefs of the combatants before involving in the conflict process. 3. Terrain, climatic conditions as well as other challenges in Darfur has advert effect on the peace keepers. Recommendations proffered are 1. Nigeria should make adequate operational plans, mandate and focus that are well spelt out with achievable objectives before engaging in future peacekeeping operation. 2. Nigeria should understand understanding of the nature of the conflict among parties, various forces at play and psychology/beliefs of the combatants before involving in the conflict process. 3. Nigeria should adequately make necessary provision that will enable the peace keepers perform their duties appropriately and professional.