Conflict: Dynamics

This chapter mainly talks about how conflicts can evolve and change over time. The authors introduce several conflict models that include stages like escalation. There are also many models that talk about the tactics of a party, such as how if one party perceives the other as aggressive or deceptive, they might defend themselves by being equally deceptive. The conflict spiral notes that it is not just one party that causes the conflict to go downwards into deception/mistrust; both sides can cause this. I found Jervis' piece about how you need to consider psychological limitations when coming up with models of how the parties interact. By this he means that a party only knows there intentions and motives; they can only infer the other parties' intentions. If they have a negative view of the other party, they will most likely interpret their actions as aggressive. This goes hand-in-hand with the idea of schema and how your mind will remember certain people, events, and procedures; they can influence your perception of a situation and perhaps distort your memory. The outcome and your feelings about an outcome can distort your memory of the event. It is good for an intervener to have this in mind because it can help them move a party away from worst-case thinking, and challenging schema.