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Resolving conflicts requires both cognitive and affective work. Rational participants in conflicts may feel bound by values, such as justice and may temper their wish to gain their own ends by considerations of what ends are just. Participants may also try to 'master' their own emotions in order to be able to take others' emotions into account. Finally, conflicts may only be resolved if participants are prepared to act for themselves and not follow on established behavioural patterns. Conflict resolution may therefore require a fair degree of autonomy. Vuchinich (1990) has suggested that conflicts may be resolved by five different methods: compromise, third-party intervention, withdrawal, standoff, and submission but Jensen-Campbell, Graziano, & Hair (1996) suggest that in practice these collapse into three outcomes negotiated resolution (compromise and third-party resolution), disengagement (withdrawal and standoff ), and coercion (submission). Studies of conflict discourse e.g. arguments around the family dinner table support stand-off being the most common interruption of a conflict (see Leung). Developmental studies of children, adolescents and young adults in conflict with peers show that coercion is more commonly observed by others to be the method of conflict resolution, and negotiation is more often reported by the participants. Negotiation is more commonly used as the suggested means of resolving hypothetical conflicts than it is used in actual conflict. Coercion is the commonest method of conflict resolution in children, who rarely disengage, but adults use disengagement as a means of avoiding conflict. The use of negotiation rather than coercion increases with age, and is more likely in conflict with romantic partners than with friends, but more likely with friends than with acquaintances, and more likely with acquaintances than with siblings. In fact, coercion remains the most common method of resolving conflicts with siblings even in young adults. These findings suggest that negotiation is always usually as the desired means of resolving conflict, but it often breaks down even in adults. Compromise is an important element in negotiation, as is reference to some sort of impartial standard, which may be represented by a third person. Negotiation also required continued engagement--the importance of maintaining communication in conflict resolution obviously comes in here.
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This project
is funded by the Leonardo da Vinci programme, project number UK/01/B/F/PP/129_387,
2000-2003 |