Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice: The Intellectual Legacy of Morton Deutsch

Peace Psychology Book Series

Series Editor Daniel J. Christie

For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/7298

Peter T. Coleman Editor

Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice The Intellectual Legacy of Morton Deutsch

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Editor Peter T. Coleman International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution Teachers College, Columbia University New York, NY 10027, USA [email protected]

ISBN 978-1-4419-9993-1 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-9994-8 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011932684 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)

Preface

Morton Deutsch has long believed in the power of ideas to rectify social problems. Raised in the intellectual atmosphere of Marx, Freud, Darwin and Einstein, he witnessed that power in action. Educated and trained to spar, question and debate in the halls of City University and MIT, he honed his considerable intellect and skills as a researcher. So as a young man returning from war, as the world reflected on the Nazi death camps and the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he turned his hungry mind to the grandiose task of addressing social ills, big and small. From marital strife to global thermonuclear warfare, from ethnic slights between peers to race riots in the streets, and from acts of “civilized oppression” in the home to state-sanctioned policies of apartheid, Deutsch devoted his life to addressing social problems through ideas that matter. This book celebrates these ideas. It presents several of Deutsch’s most seminal theoretical papers, all published previously in different journals and texts, but brought together here to highlight their originality, importance, and relevance for the world today. They cover much ground, from his early work on different types of interdependence in groups, conflict resolution and social justice, to his later thinking on interrupting oppression and sustaining justice. They culminate in two of his most ambitious intellectual undertakings: a general theoretical model of the psychosocial dynamics between people and different types of social situations, and his prophetic vision of the processes and institutions necessary for a more peaceful and prosperous world. Embedded in each of these groundbreaking papers are the ideas; the distinctions, variables, relationships, dynamics and outcomes that Deutsch developed through his reflection, research and practice (He was an experimental scientist and a practicing psychoanalyst), which he delivered to us as fully-developed theory. These ideas are essential. Although theory has been defined as “An arbitrary structure that we impose on chaos to make it meaningful and predictable” (John Whiting), some structures are much less arbitrary than others. Trained by Kurt Lewin to focus on “the essence of the phenomenon”, Deutsch’s focus in his theoretical work was basic and laser-like. Each insight integrated the work of others but then launched it to another level – to models of tremendous precision, resonance and impact.

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These ideas include: • Cooperation-competition in groups: Kurt Lewin had identified interdependence as the essence of group dynamics. In his dissertation, Deutsch went further to distinguish different types of interdependence – promotive (cooperative) and contrient (competitive), and then theorized how these differences would affect basic social-psychological processes in groups (substitutability, inducibility and cathexis) and lead to fundamentally different personal and group outcomes. These ideas have been validated by a large canon of empirical studies and have profoundly affected educational and business practices on cooperation and teams, as well as policy-making and statecraft in international affairs (see Chapter 3). • Constructive-destructive conflict: Deutsch’s research on interdependence had shown that members of cooperative and competitive groups differed markedly in how they viewed conflict. This finding was of central importance to his subsequent theoretical work on conflict resolution. It suggested that constructive processes of conflict resolution were similar to cooperative problem-solving processes, where the conflict is seen as a mutual problem, and that destructive processes of conflict resolution were similar to competitive processes, where the conflict is framed as a win-lose struggle. This basic idea cascaded into a variety of propositions (outlined in Chapter 2), which provide a general intellectual framework for understanding conflict and the conditions which foster its constructive versus destructive manifestation. Subsequently, it led to a wide array of practical methodologies and trainings for the constructive resolution of conflict at home, at work, in communities and between nations. • The Crude Law of Social Relations: Deutsch then became interested in the next logical question, “What determines whether situations move in a constructive or destructive direction?” In other words, having identified the effects of different types of interdependence on outcomes in groups, he wondered what conditions would generate these outcomes. Here, Deutsch turned his full attention to the study of conflict, as it provided the ideal conditions to study “mixedmotive” (cooperative and competitive) situations, which could move in either direction. After many studies, he identified a general pattern in the data, which he labeled his Crude Law (see Chapter 2). In essence, he found that cooperation induces more cooperation and competition induces subsequent competition. These dynamics continue to be studied and applied today. • Equity, equality and need: In the early 1970s, Deutsch began an intensive study of the literature on justice. He found himself particularly dissatisfied with the narrow approach to theories of justice in social psychology. He was struck by both the emphasis on principles of equity with the neglect of other justice principles, as well as the general Western, economic, and utilitarian assumptions that pervaded this work. His subsequent theorizing set out to develop a more comprehensive understanding of other justice principles, including winner-takes-all, equity, equality and need. His thinking in this area transformed our understanding and approach to social justice across settings (see Chapters 4, 5, 8).

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• Awakening a sense of injustice: As a consequence of his thinking on justice, Deutsch began to think systematically about the necessary conditions for addressing injustice. One particularly rich area of theorizing here was his work on the conditions and processes involved in awakening members of both low-power and high-power groups to the presence and effects of injustice (see Chapter 6). The vast implications of this work are still being explored (see Chapter 7). • A framework for interrupting oppression: Somewhat later in his career, Deutsch became concerned about the rapidly increasing gap between the “haves” and the “have nots” in institutions and societies across the globe. His assessment of scholarship in the area was that it did an excellent job of depicting the intractability of the phenomenon, but that it offered little utility for interrupting patterns of injustice or sustaining constructive changes when they did occur. As a result, he constituted a faculty group focused on identifying effective strategies for interrupting oppression and sustaining justice. The starting point was a discussion of Deutsch’s framework on “Oppression and Conflict” (see Chapters 8 and 9), which articulated his thinking about its multiple sources and means for mitigation. This lead to a 2-day working conference which brought together 80 invited participants from a wide variety of disciplines, political and community activists, public intellectuals, philanthropists, and graduate students interested in contributing to scholarly and practical work in this area. • The fundamental dimensions of social relations: While studying martial couples, Deutsch and colleague Mike Wish developed a method for identifying what they later termed, the fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations. Through multidimensional scaling analysis of survey data, this research identified five basic dimensions of social relationships: cooperative-competitive, power distribution (equal-unequal), task-oriented versus social-emotional, formal versus informal, and degree of importance. Together, these dimensions constituted one of the first attempts at mapping the full terrain of interpersonal relations, and prepared the ground for Deutsch’s more ambitious theoretical model (see Chapter 10). • Psychological orientation, social relations and fit: Deutsch later theorized that the five dimensions of social relations, when combined in situations, create distinctive types of relations, and that these types of social relations induce particular types of psychological orientations in people. He defined psychological orientations as a more or less consistent complex of cognitive, motivational, moral, and action orientations to a given situation that serve to guide one’s behaviors and responses (see Chapter 10). Due to pressures for consistency, specific types of situations will tend to elicit appropriate psychological orientations that “fit” the situation, and different types of orientations will tend to propel people towards social relations that are consistent with their orientations. This grand model of social relations has received little empirical attention, but holds great promise for future research (see Chapter 12). This set of ideas and models are illustrative of the breadth of Deutsch’s theorizing and the implications of his ideas for addressing social problems today. To

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underscore this further for this book, most of Deutsch’s original papers are accompanied by a newly-authored chapter, which situates the originals in the context of the existing state of scholarship. Each additional chapter has been authored by top contemporary scholars working in the field, including David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson (social interdependence theory), Robin R. Vallacher, Peter T. Coleman, Andrzej Nowak, and Lan Bui-Wrzosinska (intractable conflict) Sara I. McClelland and Susan Opotow (social justice), Brett G. Stoudt, Maddy Fox, and Michele Fine (addressing injustice), Danielle Gaucher and John T. Jost (dismantling oppression), and Peter T. Coleman, Robin R. Vallacher, and Andrzej Nowak (psychological orientation and interdependence). These chapters speak to the continuing legacy of Deutsch’s scholarship. Through decades of extraordinary work, Morton Deutsch became an internationally renowned social psychologist, widely honored for his scientific and practical contributions and beloved by his students. He was one of the important leaders in the development of modern social psychology. He lead by example and consequently became a great leader of leaders, including Jeff Rubin, Roy Lewicki, David W. Johnson, Michelle Fine, Harvey and Madelaine Hornstein, Barbara Buncker, Susan Opotow, Eric Marcus, Ken Sole, Kenneth Kressel, and Adrienne Asch, to name only a few. This book celebrates the life-work of Morton Deutsch, one of the world’s most influential social psychologists as well as the first president of the Division of Peace Psychology of the American Psychological Association, also called the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence. A hard-nosed scientist of the Lewinian tradition, Deutsch invested his long and prestigious career in the development of a rigorous empirical approach to the study of cooperation, constructive conflict resolution and social justice – the basic building blocks of sustainable peace. In the pages and chapters that follow, we honor this work by revisiting several of his most important works in these areas, and detailing their influence in contemporary theory and research. Below we list the books, offices, and honors of Morton Deutsch: Books about Morton Deutsch and his work Bunker, B. B., & Rubin, J. Z. (Eds.). (1995). Conflict, cooperation, and justice: Essays inspired by the work of Morton Deutsch. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Frydenburg, E. (2005). Morton Deutsch: A life and legacy of mediation and conflict resolution. Brisbane: Australian Academic Press.

Further information about Morton Deutsch and his publications are available on the ICCCR website: www.tc.edu/icccr Books in Print Research methods in social relations. New York: Holt & Dryden, 1951 and 1959 (2nd ed.) (with C. Selltiz, M. Jahoda, & S. W. Cook). Interracial housing: A psychological evaluation of a social experiment. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1951 (with M. E. Collins). Preventing World War III: Some proposals. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962 (edited with Q. Wright and W. M. Evan). Theories in social psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1965 (with R. M. Krauss).

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The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. Applying social psychology: Implications for research, practice and training. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1975 (edited with H. Hornstein). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985. The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2000 (edited with P.T. Coleman). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006 (edited with P. T. Coleman and E. Marcus).

Offices President, Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (1961–1962); President, Division of Personality and Social Psychology of the American Psychological Association (1964–1965); President, New York State Psychological Association (1965–1966); President, Eastern Psychological Association (1968– 1969); President, International Society of Political Psychology (1981–1982); first President, Division of Peace Psychology, American Psychological Association (1990–1991); Awards The social psychological prize of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1961; the Samuel Flowerman Memorial Award of the New York Society for Clinical Psychologists, 1963; the Hovland Memorial Award Lectures, Yale University, 1967; the Kurt Lewin Award, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), 1968; Research Scientist Fellowship, National Institute of Mental Health, 1970–1971; the Gordon Allport Prize, SPSSI, 1973; Visiting Scholar, Russell Sage Foundation, 1976–1977; the Kurt Lewin Award of the New York State Psychological Association, 1980; the Cattell Fund Sabbatical Fellowship, 1983–1984; the Nevit Sanford Award of the International Society of Political Psychology, 1984; the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Experimental Social Psychology, 1985; the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association, 1987; elected a William James Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, 1988; Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by the City University of New York, 1989; the Helsinki Medal for Distinguished Contributions to Psychology by the University of Helsinki, 1990; the Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Contributions to Education, 1992; Distinguished Visiting Fellowship, La Trobe University, 1993; Life-time Achievement Awards: Psychologists for Social Responsibility, 1991; the Division of Cooperative Learning of the American Education Research Association, 1993; International Association of Conflict Management, 1993; Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 1995; Society for the study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence, 1995; Levinson Award of the Division of Consulting Psychology of the American Psychological Association, 1998; The Association for Dispute Resolution for Distinguished Contributors, 2004; The James McKeen Cattell Award for Distinguished Achievements in Psychological Science of the Association of

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Psychological Science, 2007; The Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society for Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies, 2009; the Book Award (for the Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice), The CPR Institute for Dispute Resolution, 2000. Annual Awards named the Morton Deutsch Award: The Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence Award for distinguished work in the field of Conflict Resolution, 2003; The International Society for Justice Award for distinguished work in the field of social justice, 2004; Teachers College, Columbia University Award for a distinguished graduate student paper related to social justice, 2005; Teachers College, Columbia University Award for distinguished scholarly/activist contributions to social justice.

Contents

1 A Career That Spans the Life of a Social Psychologist . . . . . . . Morton Deutsch

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2 Cooperation and Competition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morton Deutsch

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3 Intellectual Legacy: Cooperation and Competition . . . . . . . . . David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson

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4 Rethinking Intractable Conflict: The Perspective of Dynamical Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robin R. Vallacher, Peter T. Coleman, Andrzej Nowak, and Lan Bui-Wrzosinska 5 Justice and Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morton Deutsch 6 Studying Injustice in the Macro and Micro Spheres: Four Generations of Social Psychological Research . . . . . . . . . Sara I. McClelland and Susan Opotow

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7 Awakening the Sense of Injustice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morton Deutsch

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8 Awakening Injustice in a New Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brett G. Stoudt, Madeline Fox, and Michelle Fine

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9 A Framework for Thinking about Oppression and Its Change . . . Morton Deutsch

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Difficulties Awakening the Sense of Injustice and Overcoming Oppression: On the Soporific Effects of System Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Danielle Gaucher and John T. Jost Interdependence and Psychological Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . Morton Deutsch

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Tackling the Great Debate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Peter T. Coleman, Robin R. Vallacher, and Andrzej Nowak

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Constructive Conflict Management for the World Today . . . . . . Morton Deutsch

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A Utopian Proposal for Changing the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . Morton Deutsch

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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contributors

Lan Bui-Wrzosinska Warsaw School of Social Sciences and Humanities, Warsaw, Poland, [email protected] Peter T. Coleman Teachers College, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Morton Deutsch Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Michelle Fine The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Madeline Fox The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Danielle Gaucher Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA, [email protected] David W. Johnson Cooperative Learning Center, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, MN, USA, [email protected] Roger T. Johnson University of Minnesota, Minnesota, MN, USA, [email protected] John T. Jost New York University, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Sara I. McClelland Psychology and Women’s Studies, Michigan Society of Fellows, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA, [email protected] Andrzej Nowak Warsaw University, Poland; Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA, [email protected] Susan Opotow John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Brett G. Stoudt Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA, [email protected] Robin R. Vallacher Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA, [email protected] xiii

About the Contributors

Lan Bui-Wrzosinska, Ph.D. is a faculty member at the Warsaw School for Social Psychology and a fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her interests are focused on the dynamical systems approach to intractable conflicts. She has cotaught courses in Poland, at Teachers College, Columbia University, and at Florida Atlantic University. She is currently developing a dynamical model of intractable conflicts and conducting experimental and qualitative studies on the dynamics of change in intractable conflicts. Lan Bui-Wrzosinska is also implementing conflict resolution programs in educational settings in Warsaw and New York City. Peter T. Coleman, Ph.D. is the Director of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR) at Teachers College, Columbia University, is Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, a member of the faculty of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Chair of the International Project on Conflict and Complexity (IPCC), Chair of the Advanced Consortium on Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4 ) at Columbia and an affiliate of the International Center for Complexity and Conflict (ICCC) at The Warsaw School for Social Psychology in Warsaw, Poland. Dr. Coleman co-edits The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (2000; 2nd edition 2006), and has authored over 50 journal articles and chapters. He is also a New York State certified mediator and experienced consultant. Michelle Fine, Ph.D. is Distinguished Professor of Social Psychology, Women’s Studies and Urban Education at The Graduate Center, CUNY and founding member of the Public Science Project. Her recent awards include the 2011 Kurt Lewin Award, 2010 Higher Education Award for Research on College in Prison from College and Community Fellowship, 2009 AERA Inaugural Fellow, 2008 Social Justice Action award from the Winter Cross Cultural Roundtable on Psychology and Education, 2007 Willystine Goodsell Award from the American Educational Research Association, the 2005 First Annual Morton Deutsch Award, an Honorary Doctoral Degree for Education and Social Justice from Bank Street College in 2002 and the Carolyn Sherif Award from the American Psychological Association in 2001. Recent publications include: Cammarota, J. and Fine, M. (Eds.,

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2008) Revolutionizing Education: Youth Participatory Action Research in Motion, Routledge Publishers; and Sirin, S. and Fine, M. (2008) Muslim American Youth: Researching Hyphenated Identities through Multiple Methods, New York University Press. Madeline Fox is a doctoral candidate in the Social-Personality Psychology program at the CUNY Graduate Center and director of the Polling for Justice project. Her participatory research focuses on youth experiences of every day criminalization, dignity, mutual implication and conditions for provoking political solidarity with adult audiences. Madeline and co-researchers practice embodied methodologies to analyze and disseminate the findings from their research. She is co-editor of Telling Stories to Change the World: Global Voices on the Power of Narrative to Build Community and Make Social Justice Claims (Solinger, Fox, & Irani, 2008). Her work can be found in volumes such as The Handbook of Research and Policy on Civic Engagement in Youth (Sherrod, Torney-Puta, & Flanagan, 2011) and Be The Change: Teacher, Activist, Global Citizen (Verma, 2010). Danielle Gaucher, Ph.D. is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Post Doctoral Fellow at Princeton University. She holds a PhD from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Her research centers on issues of social justice and social change, specifically investigating the social-psychological processes that serve to maintain inequality. Her work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. David W. Johnson, Ed.D. is the Co-Director of the Cooperative Learning Center. He held the Emma M. Birkmaier Professorship in Educational Leadership at the University of Minnesota from 1994 to 1997 and the Libra Endowed Chair for Visiting Professor at the University of Maine in 1996–1997. He has authored over 500 research articles and book chapters and over 50 books and is a past-editor of the American Educational Research Journal. For the past 40 years he has served as an organizational consultant to schools and businesses throughout the world and is a practicing psychotherapist. His research interests are (a) cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts; (b) conflict resolution (structured controversy and peer mediation), and (c) social psychology of groups in general. He is active in the field of organizational development and change, and in innovation in educational practice. Roger T. Johnson, Ed.D. is a professor of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. He holds his doctoral degree from the University of California in Berkeley. He is the Co-Director of the Cooperative Learning Center. He and his brother David were awarded the Brock International Prize in Education in 2007. Dr. Johnson’s public school teaching experience includes kindergarten through eighth grade instruction in self-contained classrooms, open schools, nongraded situations, cottage schools, and departmentalized (science) schools. At the college level, Dr. Johnson has taught teacher-preparation courses for undergraduate through PhD programs. He has consulted with schools throughout North America,

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Central and South America, Eastern and Western Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific Region. He taught in the Harvard-Newton Intern Program as a Master Teacher. He was a curriculum developed with the Elementary Science Study in the Educational Development Center at Harvard University. For three summers he taught classes in the British Primary Schools at the University of Sussex near Brighton, England. Nationally, Dr. Johnson is a leading authority on inquiry teaching and science education. John T. Jost, Ph.D. is a Professor of Psychology at New York University. Most of his work focuses on theoretical and empirical implications of a system justification theory, which was first proposed by Jost and Banaji (1994) and updated by Jost, Banaji, and Nosek (2004). There are two major goals of system justification theory, and much of my experimental and survey research has addressed one or both of these goals. The first goal is to understand how and why people provide cognitive and ideological support for the status quo, even when their support appears to conflict with personal and group interests. The second is to analyze the social and psychological antecedents and consequences of supporting the status quo, especially for members of disadvantaged groups. His research interests include the study of complementary stereotypes in which members of high and low status groups are seen as possessing distinct sets of advantages and disadvantages. Sara I. McClelland, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor of Psychology and Women’s Studies and a Post-Doctoral Scholar in the Michigan Society of Fellows at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the links between sexual health, psychological research methods, and issues of social justice. Her work has appeared in Harvard Educational Review, Emory Law Journal, and Social Justice Research and is forthcoming in the Journal of Research on Adolescence and the Handbook of Health Psychology. Current research involves developing new methodological approaches to studies of sexual well-being across the life span. She received her Ph.D. in Social/Personality Psychology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Andrzej Nowak, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology at the Warsaw School for Social Psychology, where he is the Director of the Institute of Social Psychology of Informatics and Communications. He is also Professor of Psychology at University of Warsaw, where he directs the Center for Complex Systems at the Institute for Social Studies, and Associate Professor of Psychology, Florida Atlantic University. His primary focus is on the dynamical approach to social psychology. He has done research concerning social influence, social transitions, social dilemmas, emotions, and the self. His current research includes the use of coupled dynamical systems to simulate the emergence of personality through social coordination, attractor neural networks to model interpersonal and group dynamics, and cellular automata to simulate societal change. Dr. Nowak has published five books, including two with Robin Vallacher concerning dynamical social psychology.

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Susan Opotow, Ph.D. is a Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her research concerns the social psychology of justice, specifically inclusion in and exclusion from the scope of justice. She was president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (2008– 2009) and is is editor of Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Fellow of the American Psychological Association, Secretary of the International Society of Justice Research, recipient of the 2008 Morton Deutsch Conflict Resolution Award, and 2010 awardee of the American Psychological Foundation Lynn Stuart Weiss Lecture. Brett G. Stoudt, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department with a joint appointment in the Gender Studies Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He has worked on numerous participatory research projects nationally and internationally. He has been involved with research collectives of local women and human rights lawyers in Southeast Asia and Africa. He was formerly the Director of Boys Research for the Center for the Study of Boys’ & Girls’ Lives: a consortium of schools throughout the country committed to institutional based collaborative research. He has recently served as the Research Director for Polling for Justice: a large NYC based participatory action research project to explore, with youth and adults, the experiences of young people across criminal justice, education, and public health. His work has been published in volumes such as Class Privilege & Education Advantage and journals such as The Urban Review; Children, Youth & Environments; and Men and Masculinities. Robin R. Vallacher, Ph.D. Robin R. Vallacher is a member of the Social Psychology and Evolutionary Psychology programs and an affiliated member of the Applied Psychology program. He directs the Dynamical Social Psychology Lab, which investigates the dynamic properties of complex human experience at different levels of social reality, from individual functioning (e.g., self-concept, self-regulation, social judgment) to dyadic and group-level processes (e.g., close relations, societal change). Current research topics include evaluative coherence in social judgment, the dynamics of self-evaluative thought, the role of emotion in selfregulation, the emergence and maintenance of self-concept, behavioral and mental synchronization in social interaction, and the emergence of diverse justice beliefs in society and the potential for catastrophic change in these beliefs. These topics are investigated with laboratory experiments utilizing time-series data and by means of computer simulations (cellular automata, attractor neural networks, coupled dynamical systems). Dr. Vallacher is also exploring the relevance of dynamic principles and methods for issues in evolutionary psychology and is adapting dynamical tools to identify the attractors (equilibrium tendencies) underlying the cognitive and affective dynamics of people diagnosed with various forms of mental illness.

Chapter 1

A Career That Spans the Life of a Social Psychologist Morton Deutsch

My career almost spans the existence of modern social psychology. I entered the City College of New York (CCNY) in 1935 at the age of 15: two-and-a-half-years younger than most students, as a premed major with the idea of becoming a psychiatrist, having been intrigued by the writings of Sigmund Freud, some of which I read before college. I was drawn to psychoanalysis undoubtedly because it appeared to be so relevant to the personal issues with which I was struggling, and also because it was so radical and rebellious (it seemed to be so in the early and mid-1930s). During my adolescence, I was also politically radical and somewhat rebellious toward authority, helping to organize a student strike against the terrible food in the high school lunchroom and, later, a strike against the summer resort owners who were exploiting the college student waiters, of whom I was one. The 1930s were a turbulent period, internationally as well as domestically. The economic depression; labor unrest; the rise of Nazism and other forms of totalitarianism; the Spanish civil war; the ideas of Marx, Freud, and Albert Einstein; and the impending Second World War were shaping the intellectual atmosphere that affected psychology. Several members of the psychology faculty at CCNY were active in creating the Psychologist League, the precursor to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI). Thus when I became disenchanted with the idea of being a premed student after dissecting a pig in a biology lab, I was happy to switch to a psychology major: It was a simpatico faculty. Psychology was a part of the Department of Philosophy at CCNY when I started my major in it. Morris Raphael Cohen, the distinguished philosopher of science, was the leading intellectual figure at CCNY, and his influence permeated the atmosphere. At CCNY Max Hertzman introduced me to the ideas of Kurt Lewin and other Gestalt theorists. And under Walter Scott Neff’s direction, I conducted my first laboratory experiment, a variation on Sherif’s study of social norms, employing the Deutsch, M. (2008). A career that spans the history of modern Social Psychology. In R. Levine, A. Rodrigues, & L. Zelezny (Eds.), Journeys in Social Psychology: Looking back to inspire the future (221–240). New York: Psychology Press. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] P.T. Coleman (ed.), Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice, Peace Psychology Book C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8_1, 

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autokinetic effect. As I now recall, in it I introduced a stooge who constantly judged the stationary speck of light in a dark room as having moved a substantial distance in one direction. (Most subjects see the light as moving small distances in varying directions). The stooge had a considerable impact on the judgments made by the naïve majority of subjects. The findings of this pilot study anticipated later research by Serge Moscovici on minority influence. My first exposure to Lewin’s writings was in two undergraduate courses, taken simultaneously: social psychology and personality and motivation. In the social psychology course, one of our textbooks was J. F. Brown’s Psychology and the Social Order (1936). This was an ambitious, challenging, and curious text that tried to apply to the major social issues of the 1930s Lewinian and Marxian ideas, with a sprinkling of the Riemanian geometry employed by Einstein in his theory of relativity. To a naïve 17-year-old undergraduate student like me, it was a very impressive and inspiring book showing how social science could shed light on the urgent problems of our time. In the personality and motivation course, I read Lewin’s Dynamic Theory of Personality (1935) and Principles of Topological Psychology (1936). I also read his Conceptual Representation and Measurement of Psychological Forces (1938) as an undergraduate, but I cannot recall when. I, and others, experienced great intellectual excitement by reading these books more than 60 years ago. A Dynamic Theory of Personality consisted of a collection of independent articles, previously published in the early 1930s, whereas the other books made a brilliant but flawed attempt to articulate the foundations of a scientific psychology with the aid of topology. They were mind openers. These books are permeated by a view of the nature of psychological science different from what was then traditional. The new view was characterized by Lewin as the “Galilean mode of thought,” which was contrasted with the classical “Aristotelian mode.” In my writings on field theory, I have characterized in some detail Lewin’s approach to psychological theorizing, his metatheory. Although I was impressed by Lewin’s writings, my career aspirations in psychology were still focused on becoming a psychoanalytic psychologist as I decided to do graduate work in psychology. My undergraduate experiences, in as well as outside the classroom, led me to believe that an integration of psychoanalysis, Marxism, and scientific method, as exemplified by Lewin’s work, could be achieved. In the 1930s such influential figures as Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Else Frenkel-Brunswik, as well as many others, were trying to develop an integration of psychoanalysis and Marxism. Also at this time, some psychoanalytic theorists such as David Rappaport were intrigued by the idea that research conducted by Lewin and his students on tension systems could be viewed as a form of experimental psychoanalysis. I am not sure why I was advised to go to the University of Pennsylvania to take my master’s degree. Possibly it was because it had a well-established psychological clinic and two faculty members, Frances Irwin and Malcolm Preston, who were sympathetic to Lewin’s ideas. I had some interesting clinical experiences there working with children, largely without supervision, but the course work seemed dull and antiquated in comparison with my undergraduate courses at CCNY. I earned the reputation of being a radical by challenging what I considered to be racist

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statements about Negro intelligence in a course on psychological measurement given by Morris Viteles. After earning my M.A. degree in 1940, I started a rotating clinical internship at three New York state institutions: one was for the feebleminded (Letchworth Village), another for delinquent boys (Warwick), and a third for psychotic children and adults (Rockland State Hospital). During my internship I became skilled in diagnostic testing and clinical interventions with a considerable variety of inmates, more widely read in psychoanalysis, and more aware of how some capable inmates were unjustly retained in the institution because of the valuable services they performed for it or its staff. I also had the good fortune to meet Clark Hull (the famous learning theorist) while he was visiting a former doctoral student of his, a staff psychologist at Letchworth Village. He was a remarkably generous and tolerant person. We had several long discussions, one related to his recently published book developing a hypothetico-deductive system for rote learning. I had read the book and was somewhat critical of it from two perspectives: the perspective of Gestalt psychology and of Morris Cohen and Ernst Nagel’s book on scientific method, both of which I had been thoroughly indoctrinated in while I was an undergraduate at CCNY. Hull seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say even though I was an overly brash 20-year-old pipsqueak. We had another interesting discussion in which he gave me advice on how to seduce a woman. He told me that, on a date, I should carry a handkerchief permeated with perspiration. He explained that sweat and sexual feelings were associated together because of their joint occurrence during sexual intercourse and that sweat would arouse sexual feelings. In retrospect, I realize that he must have been joking, because his suggestion never worked for me. When Pearl Harbor was bombed in December 1941, I was still in my psychology internship. Shortly thereafter, I joined the air force. I flew in 30 bombing missions against the Germans. During combat I saw many of our planes as well as German planes shot down, and I also saw the massive damage inflicted by our bombs and those of the Royal Air Force on occupied Europe and Germany. Moreover, being stationed in England, I saw the great destruction wrecked by the German air raids and felt the common apprehensions while sitting in air-raid shelters during German bombings. Although I had no doubt of the justness of the war against the Nazis, I was appalled by its destructiveness. After my demobilization, I contacted some psychology faculty members I knew at CCNY to ask for advice with regard to resuming graduate work in psychology. I discussed with them my somewhat confused interests in getting clinical training, in studying with Lewin because of his work on democratic and autocratic leadership, and in doing psychological research. As a result of these conversations, I decided to apply for admission to the doctoral programs at the University of Chicago (where Carl Rogers and L. L. Thurstone were the leading lights), at Yale University (where Donald Marquis was chairman and where Clark Hull was the major attraction), and at MIT (where Kurt Lewin had established a new graduate program and the Research Center for Group Dynamics [RCGD]). As one of the first of the returning soldiers, I had no trouble in getting interviews or admission at all three schools. I was most impressed by Kurt Lewin and his vision of his newly established research center and so I decided to take my Ph.D. at MIT.

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My Autobiography as a Social Psychologist I date the start of my career as a social psychologist to my first meeting with Lewin, in which I was enthralled by him and committed myself to studying at his center. He had arranged for me to meet him for breakfast at a midtown hotel in New York in August 1945. Even though it was very hot, I dressed formally—with jacket and tie—to meet with this distinguished professor. Our meeting time was 8:30 a.m., but he did not appear until about 9:00 a.m. He came bustling in, cheerfully looking around for me, his face bright pink from a recent sunburn. He was not wearing a jacket or a tie, and his manner was quite informal. I recognized him from a picture that I had seen and introduced myself, and we set off for the hotel’s dining room. But they would not admit us because he had no jacket or tie (how things have changed). We then went to a nearby coffee shop. I do not remember much about the conversation other than that I described my education, experience, and interests, and he described his plans for the new center. I was being treated as an equal; I felt somewhat courted; I was experiencing a trancelike sensation of intellectual illumination with new insights constantly bubbling forth from this brilliant, enthusiastic, effervescent, youthful, middle-aged man. He spoke a colloquial American tongue, often with malapropisms, and he was both endearing and charming. I left the interview with no doubt that I wanted to study with Lewin. I also left in a dazed sense of enlightenment, but I could not specifically identify what I was enlightened about when I later tried to pin it down for myself. I had a similar experience a month later when I went to MIT to study and work with Lewin. He discussed with me some work he was then doing with the Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress (a commission he helped to establish) to reduce anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice. His discussion of the issues was intensely illuminating when I was with him, but I could not define it afterward when I was alone. At the end of our meeting, he asked me to prepare a review of the essence of the literature on prejudice, and he indicated that it should be brief and that he needed it in three days. I felt good. I was being treated as a serious professional and was given a responsible and challenging task. Lewin’s treatment of me was, I believe, typical of his relations with his colleagues and students. He would discuss a topic with great enthusiasm and insight, he would ignite one’s interest, and he would encourage one to get involved in a task that was intellectually challenging, giving complete freedom for one to work on it as one saw fit. Shortly after arriving at MIT, I noticed a very attractive young woman, named Lydia Shapiro, who would occasionally pop into the center. She was working under Lewin’s direction as an interviewer for a study on self-hatred among Jews. We started to get to know one another over cherry Cokes and jelly donuts. Being supported on the GI Bill, I was a cheapskate, and she did like jelly donuts. I don’t recall the specifics, but somehow I was assigned to supervise her work. After learning that she spent much of her supposed work time sunning herself on the banks of the Charles River, I fired her. About a year and a half later, on June 1, 1947, we got married. Stan Schachter and Al Pepitone, with whom I was sharing an apartment,

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were my best men at the wedding. In moments of marital tension, I have accused Lydia of marrying me to get even, but she asserts it was pure masochism on her part. In our 60 years of marriage, I have had splendid opportunities to study conflict as a participant observer. Immediately after our honeymoon in Quebec, we went to Bethel in Maine for the first National Training Laboratory (NTL). I served on its research staff with other students from the RCGD at MIT and from the Harvard Department of Social Relations. Lydia and another woman were the rumrunners for the workshop; Bethel was a dry town, and they had to drive 20 miles to buy the liquor to keep the workshop staff and participants well lubricated. The first NTL was a natural follow-up of the Connecticut Workshop on Intergroup Relations held during the summer of 1946. As I now recall it, the training staff consisted of Ron Lippitt, Ken Benne, and Lee Bradford, and the research staff consisted of Murray Horowitz, Mef Seeman, and me. One evening, following a lengthy workshop day, Lewin, the workshop participants, the trainers, and the researchers were all sitting around a conference table when one of the participants turned to the researchers and asked us what we were doing. We said that we were keeping track of the patterns of interaction among the group. He then asked us to describe what we had noted; Lewin suggested that would be an interesting thing to do. We summarized our impressions, and this led to a lively, productive discussion among the participants that all of us felt was a valuable, insightful, learning experience. This was the embryo of the T-group and sensitivity training that was given birth at the first NTL in 1947. I would now say that the researchers at the first NTL did not fully appreciate the importance of the new procedures and new movement being developed. The evangelical tone of some of the trainers appalled many of us, with the result that there was considerable unhappiness among the researchers that summer of 1947. Today many of us recognize the NTL as the birthplace of much of applied social psychology, especially in the area of organizational psychology. Lewin assembled a remarkable group of faculty and students to compose the RCGD at MIT. For the faculty, he initially recruited Dorwin Cartwright, Leon Festinger, Ronald Lippitt, and Marian Radke (now Radke-Yarrow). Jack French and Alvin Zander were to join later. The small group of 12 students included Kurt Back, Alex Bavelas, David Emery, Gordon Hearn, Murray Horowitz, David Jenkins, Albert Pepitone, Stanley Schachter, Richard Snyder, Jon Thibaut, Ben Willerman, and me. These initial faculty and students were extraordinarily productive, and they played a pivotal role in developing modern social psychology in its applied and its basic aspects. As I write these past two sentences, it strikes me that all of the students and the key faculty members were men. This was quite a change for Lewin; in Berlin most of his students were women (e.g., Bluma Zeigarnik, Tamara Dembo, Eugenia Hanfmann, Maria Ovsiankina, and Anitra Karsten). It is interesting to speculate how modern social psychology’s development might have differed if the student group included a substantial number of women. Lewin died suddenly on February 11, 1947, of a heart attack. The RCGD had been functioning for considerably less than 2 years when he died. Yet in this brief

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period of time he had established an institution that would strongly influence the development of modern social psychology. My career in social psychology has been greatly affected by Kurt Lewin and my experiences at the RCGD. First, I probably would not have been a social psychologist were it not for the inspiring interview with him in the summer of 1945. Second, the intellectual atmosphere created by Lewin at the RCGD strongly shaped my dissertation and my value orientation as a social psychologist. Lewin was not only an original, tough-minded theorist and researcher with a profound interest in the philosophy and methodology of science but also a tenderhearted psychologist who was deeply involved with developing psychological knowledge that would be relevant to important human concerns. He provided a scientific role model that I have tried to emulate. Like Lewin, I have wanted my theory and research to be relevant to important social issues, but I also wanted my work to be scientifically rigorous and tough-minded. As a student, I was drawn to both the tough-mindedness of Festinger’s work and to the direct social relevance of Lippitt’s approach and did not feel the need to identify with one and derogate the other.

My Dissertation Study My dissertation started off with an interest in issues of war and peace (atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly before I resumed my graduate studies) and with an image of the possible ways that the nations composing the newly formed United Nations Security Council would interact. The atmosphere at the center, still persisting after Lewin’s premature death, led me to turn this social concern about the risk of nuclear war into a theoretically oriented, experimental investigation of the effects of cooperative and competitive processes. The specific problem that I was first interested in took on a more generalized form. It had been transformed into an attempt to understand the fundamental features of cooperative and competitive relations and the consequences of these different types of interdependencies in a way that would be generally applicable to the relations among individuals, groups, or nations. The problem had become a theoretical one, with the broad scientific goal of attempting to interrelate and give insight into a variety of phenomena through several fundamental concepts and basic propositions. The intellectual atmosphere at the center pushed its students to theory building. Lewin’s favorite slogan was, “There is nothing so practical as a good theory.” As I reflect back on the intellectual roots of my dissertation, I see it was influenced not only by Lewin’s theoretical interest in social interdependence but also by the Marxist concern with two different systems of distributive justice: a cooperative egalitarian one and a competitive meritocratic one. In addition, the writings of George Herbert Mead affected my way of thinking about cooperation and its importance to civilized life. This study, in addition to being the takeoff point for much of my subsequent work, has helped to stimulate the development of a movement toward cooperative

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learning in the schools under the leadership of David and Roger Johnson. Although cooperative learning has many ancestors and can be traced back for at least 2,000 years, my dissertation helped to initiate the development of a systematic theoretical and research base for cooperative learning. Hundreds of research studies have since been done on the relative impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (see Johnson & Johnson, 1989). These various studies are quite consistent with one another and with my initial theoretical work and research on the effects of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, 1949a, 1949b) in indicating favorable effects on students. Through cooperative learning, students develop a considerably greater commitment, helpfulness, and caring for one another regardless of differences in ability level, ethnic background, gender, social class, and physical ability. They develop more skill in taking the perspective of others, emotionally and cognitively. They develop greater self-esteem and a greater sense of being valued by their classmates. They develop more positive attitudes toward learning, school, and their teachers. They usually learn more in the subjects they are studying by cooperative learning, and they also acquire more of the skills and attitudes that are conducive to effective collaboration with others.

The Research Center for Human Relations After earning my Ph.D. from MIT in the summer of 1948, I joined the Research Center for Human Relations (then at the New School) headed by Stuart Cook. The war against Nazism had stimulated a considerable interest among psychologists in understanding prejudice and how to overcome it, and financial support for research in this area was available from Jewish organizations such as the American Jewish Congress as well as from federal agencies. Among the many groups receiving funding for work in this area were members of the Berkeley Public Opinion Study and the former Frankfurt Institute of Social Research, who produced The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950); Lewin’s MIT Center, which developed not only the first workshop for reducing prejudice and improving intergroup relations but also action research “to help social agencies that were developing programs aimed at reducing prejudice and discrimination”; and the Harvard group working with G. W. Allport (1954b) on creating an integrated overview of the nature of prejudice and ways of reducing it. The Research Center for Human Relations was in 1948 also mainly funded by agencies interested in reducing prejudice. As soon as I joined, I became involved in a study of interracial housing that I conducted with Mary Evan Collins. We started with an “experience survey” of knowledgeable public housing officials to identify the important factors affecting interracial relations in housing projects. On the basis of this survey, we decided that the residential pattern—whether the races were segregated or integrated within the housing project—was a critical determinant. We then set out to identify housing projects that were otherwise similar but differed in terms of whether black and white residents lived in separate buildings or were

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integrated within each building. We were able to identify biracial segregated public housing developments in Newark, New Jersey, and racially integrated ones in New York City that were roughly similar. We then did an extensive interview and a small observational study in the projects, and by the use of various controls, we created a quasi-ex post factor experiment. Despite the obvious methodological limitations of such a study, it was clear that the two types of projects differed profoundly in terms of the kinds of contacts between the two races and the attitudes that they developed toward each other. This study (Deutsch & Collins, 1951) had important social consequences. As the executive director of the Newark Public Housing Authority stated in a postscript to our book Interracial Housing, “The partial segregation which has characterized public housing in Newark will no longer obtain. In large measure, this change in fundamental policy reflects the impact of the study reported in this book. The study has served as a catalyst to the re-examination of our basic interracial policies in housing and as a stimulus to this change.” It also led me to become active on an SPSSI committee concerned with intergroup relations. Over the next several years, this committee gave talks before policy-oriented groups as well as helped lawyers who were challenging racial segregation in various suits brought before federal courts. The committee also contributed material to the legal brief that was cited in the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. the Board of Education, which outlawed racial segregation in schools and other publicly supported facilities. In 1949 the Research Center for Human Relations moved to New York University (NYU), and I became a member of its graduate faculty in psychology. Here I worked collaboratively with Marie Jahoda and Stuart Cook on an SPSSI-sponsored textbook, Research Methods in Social Relations (Jahoda, Deutsch, & Cook, 1951), one of the earliest—if not the earliest—of its kind. To help me overcome my Kafkaesque, Germanic style of writing, Mitzi pinned on my wall a slogan that stated, “You don’t have to write complex sentences to be profound.” It was a good reminder as well as a subtle way of deflating my pompous persona of theorist-basic researcher with which I had emerged from my graduate studies. At NYU I also worked collaboratively with Harold Gerard on a laboratory study of normative and informational influence on individual judgment and a study of decision making among high-level air force officers. In addition, with support from the Office of Naval Research, I was able to start a program of research on factors affecting the initiation of cooperation. Hal had introduced me to Howard Raiffa, who in turn introduced me to the Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), which I soon turned into a useful research format for investigating trust and suspicion (Deutsch, 1973). I was probably the first psychologist to use the PD game in research. Unfortunately, the PD game (like the Asch situation and the Skinner box) became an easy format for conducting experimental studies, and as a result a torrent of studies followed—most of which had no theoretical significance. I added to my busy schedule by undertaking training as a psychoanalyst at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, which had an eclectic orientation rather than a commitment to one or another school of psychoanalysis. It involved not only my own analysis (three times per week) but also 6–9 h of classes, 20 h of psychoanalytic

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psychotherapy work, and 2–3 h of supervision per week. It was hectic, but I was young. It was an extremely valuable supplement to my work as an experimental social psychologist, which gives perspectives only on very narrow cross-sections of people’s lives. Psychoanalysis provided a longitudinal, developmental view in addition to glimpses into the internal psychodynamics underlying a person’s behavior in conflict situations. My psychoanalytic work stimulated my research interest in such topics as trust and suspicion and conflict. It has been a two-way street. My social psychological work on conflict, negotiation, and mediation has affected my therapeutic approach to the conflicts experienced by patients as well as my approach to marital therapy. I continued a small private practice until about 15 years ago, when I wanted to have more freedom to travel. The practice was personally rewarding. I helped a number of people, it enabled me to stay in touch with my own inner life, and it provided a welcome supplement to my academic salary. During my tenure at NYU, most of my salary was paid out of soft money, from research grants or other monies from outside sources. As McCarthyism developed increasing strength in the early 1950s, social science and social scientists became targets of attack, being labeled as “radical,” “fellow travelers,” “communist sympathizers,” and the like. If your personal library contained books by Karl Marx, if you had participated in interracial groups challenging segregation, if a friend was or had been a member of the Communist Party, and so on, you were suspect and might be purged from your position. During the height of the McCarthy period, many funding agencies no longer were willing to support research dealing with prejudice or interracial relations, and there was much talk of reducing federal support for social science research. Thus I was happy to accept when Carl Hovland, in 1956, invited me to help establish a new basic research group in psychology at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. Bell Labs had an excellent reputation for its support of basic research, and this is what I wanted to do, without the constant problem of raising money. Much to my surprise, even during the worst part of McCarthyism I never had any problems, and my funding from the Office of Naval Research or the air force did not stop. Although never a communist, I had many of the characteristics of the usual suspect. It is possible that I was not harassed because I had received a security clearance from the air force in the early 1950s before doing research on its decision making.

The Bell Laboratories Bell Labs was, by academic standards, a luxurious place to work. I received a good salary and had no trouble getting research assistants, equipment, secretarial help, and travel money as well as much freedom to do what I wanted. I was able to hire Bob Krauss and Norah Rosenau, then graduate students at NYU, to work as my research assistants. I was also able to add Hal Gerard and Sy Rosenberg to our research staff. It was a productive group. At Bell Labs, Bob Krauss and I developed and conducted research with the Acme-Bolt Trucking game; we also started on our

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book Theories in Social Psychology (Deutsch & Krauss, 1965). I did various other studies on the interpretation of praise and criticism, dissonance and defensiveness, and effects of group size and task structure on group processes and performance (e.g., “The Interpretation of Praise and Criticism,” Deutsch, 1961, 1962). In addition, while at the Bell Labs, I was its unofficial peacenik, criticizing the strategic thinking among establishment intellectuals and coediting the book Preventing World War III (Wright, Evan, & Deutsch, 1962). During this period I was quite active in the SPSSI, articulating some of the social psychological assumptions underlying our national policy and even becoming its president. Although Bell Labs was in many respects a fine place to work, it had its problems. Compared to a university, it was a stiff organization: It had a clear hierarchical structure; it had fairly set hours of work and vacation (from which I was a tolerated deviant); the lab had no small, offbeat, informal eating places that served wine or beer; and there were few students and little ethnic or racial diversity. In addition, there were specific problems related to our psychological research unit. Although it was located in the Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, the Personnel Research Group at AT&T had been instrumental in getting the unit established and thought that we should be primarily working closely with them on problems with which they needed help. None of us who had come to Bell Labs at Carl Hovland’s urging had this view, and apparently Carl did not either. The administrative head of our unit was a former member of the AT&T Personnel Research Group. An uncomfortable power struggle developed about what we should be doing, which Bell Labs ultimately won. But because of the dispute and also because we were the oddballs of the Bell Labs (which was composed mainly of physical scientists and mathematicians), we were the constant object of high-level attention. We had visits from the president of AT&T, the president of Western Electric, the presidents of various Bell Telephone companies, and so on, and at each visit our group would have to put on a show, lasting one or two days, in which we would demonstrate our research. During one of these visits, when a committee came in order to make a recommendation about the future of our group, we received word that Bob and I had just been awarded the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) sociopsychology prize for the research we had done at the Bell Labs with the Acme-Bolt Trucking game (Deutsch & Krauss, 1962). This apparently laid to rest the doubts about our group. In addition to the people I recruited for my research group on interpersonal processes, Alex Bavelas, another key staff member selected by Hovland, recruited Herbert Jenkins, a Skinnerian who did his research on learning using pigeons. Herb must have had several people a day ask him, jokingly, “Going to replace the telephone with pigeons, eh?” After a year or so, Bavelas quit the labs, feeling that it was not a receptive environment for what he wanted to do. Jenkins then recruited Roger Shepard, who started his brilliant work on multidimensional scaling there. While at the labs, I was consulted by its administration on problems such as how to improve the creativity of their researchers, how to apply social science knowledge to improve the functioning of the various telephone companies, and how to improve race relations. As I recall, I gave many potentially useful suggestions, none of which

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were implemented. I also suggested that they hire Henry Riecken to establish a social science development group to develop existing social science knowledge for use in the Bell system. Although Bell interviewed Riecken, they did not implement this idea either. Hovland died in 1961, and about a year later I started to think about leaving the labs. I was getting tired of commuting from New York City to Murray Hill; I missed working with graduate students and working in the looser, less hierarchical atmosphere of a university; and I was bored by the special attention that our group was receiving. My memory of the specifics is unclear, but around this time I was approached by Teachers College to consider an appointment to replace Goodwin Watson, who was retiring, and to head its doctoral program in social psychology. Teachers College was attractive to me because Lydia and I were determined to continue living in New York. I would have the freedom to create a new social psychology program, and I was interested in education. I received other feelers from nearby institutions (the Department of Management at Yale University and the Department of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine) that would have provided higher salaries and more affluent settings, but they did not have the lure of shaping a social psychology program.

Teachers College When I joined Teachers College in September 1963, I had a strong view of what I wanted the new social psychology program to be like. I wanted it to attract students and turn out graduates who would be tough-minded and tenderhearted, who would be as knowledgeable and expert in theory and research as the best of the pure experimental social psychologists, and who would also be concerned with developing and applying social psychological knowledge to the urgent and important social problems of our time. In other words, I wanted to develop a program that would overcome the split that had developed between the laboratory and applied social psychology during the 1950s and the early 1960s. As I have indicated earlier, the differences between the sharp-minded and sharp-tongued Festinger and the evangelical, unsystematic Lippitt were precursors of this split, which widened into a chasm in the decade after Lewin’s death. Although the split was understandable in terms of the insecurities of both sides in a young discipline, it was harmful and stupid from my perspective. It polluted the atmosphere of social psychology. When I left Bell Labs (a tough-minded institution) to join Teachers College (a tenderhearted one), I thought that my experimental colleagues would consider this to be a loss of status for me and that my new colleagues would be concerned that I would be overly critical and scientistic (rather than scientific) as well as out of touch with practical realities. However, by the time I came to Teachers College, I felt sufficiently secure in my own identity as a social psychologist not to be concerned by colleagues who would deprecate either tenderheartedness or tough-mindedness.

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I was fortunate when I came to Teachers College in several respects. First, although Teachers College, like most schools of education, has relatively little money for research by its faculty or stipends for its graduate students, I was able to bring in outside funding to get the social psychology program off to a good start: The National Science Foundation (NSF) gave funds to build a well-equipped social psychology laboratory, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) supported my research, and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided a training grant that would support most of our graduate students. Second, we were able to attract many excellent students who fit our criteria of being tough-minded and tenderhearted, including Harvey Hornstein, David Johnson, Jeffrey Rubin, Roy Lewicki, Barbara Bunker, Madeleine Heilman, Kenneth Kressel, Charles Judd Jr., Janice Steil, Michelle Fine, Ivan Lansberg, Louis Medvene, Susan Boardman, Sandra Horowitz, Susan Opotow, Eben Weitzman, Martha Gephart, Adrienne Asch, and Peter Coleman. Third, our program was initially small enough for us to be a very cohesive group that mainly worked cooperatively on interrelated research projects under my direction. We could have frequent informal lunches together during which we discussed politics, diets, Jackie Ferguson (our fascinating secretary who mothered us all), and research and theory. Many good ideas emerged from these lunches. Finally, the change from Bell Labs to Teachers College accelerated a shift in focus and labeling of my research. At the Bell Labs, I and others came to view the Acme-Bolt Trucking game as a bargaining game, so I began to think of studies that employed it as bargaining or negotiation studies and more generally as conflict studies. This was a shift away from labeling them as studies of the conditions affecting the initiation of cooperation. With a change in labeling, I began to reframe the question underlying much of my research from “What are the conditions that give rise to cooperation rather than competition?” to “What are the conditions that give rise to constructive rather than destructive processes of resolving conflict?” At a conceptual level, the two questions are very similar. Nevertheless, the latter phrasing is much sexier; it resonates directly to many aspects of life and to the other social sciences and psychology. And it is also directly connected to many of the social issues with which I was concerned: war and peace, intergroup relations, class conflict, and family conflict. It was a productive reframing that led to much research in our social psychology laboratory by my students and me. My book The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes, published in 1973, summarized much of this research and had a considerable impact in the social sciences. It helped to provide a new way of thinking about conflict and broadened the focus of the field to include constructive conflicts as well as destructive ones. Our research into the question central to The Resolution of Conflict started off with the assumption that if the parties involved in a conflict situation had a cooperative rather than competitive orientation toward one another, they would be more likely to engage in a constructive process of conflict resolution. In my earlier research on the effects of cooperation and competition on group process, I had demonstrated that a cooperative process was more productive than a competitive process in dealing with a problem that a group faces. I reasoned that the same would be true in a mixed-motive situation of conflict. A conflict could be viewed

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as a mutual problem facing the conflicting parties. Our initial research on trust and suspicion employing the Prisoner’s Dilemma game strongly supported my reasoning, as did subsequent research employing other experimental formats. I believe that this is a very important result that has considerable theoretical and practical significance. At a theoretical level, it enabled me to link my prior characterization of cooperation and competitive social processes to the nature of the processes of conflict resolution that would typically give rise to constructive or destructive outcomes. That is, I had found a way to characterize the central features of constructive and destructive processes of conflict resolution; doing so represented a major advance beyond the characterization of outcomes as constructive or destructive. This not only was important in itself but also opened up a new possibility that we would be able to develop insight into the conditions that initiated or stimulated the development of cooperative-constructive versus competitive-destructive processes of conflict. Although the gaming conflicts in the laboratory during this period (1963–1973) were relatively benign, the conflicts in the outside world were not. During this period the cold war escalated; the Berlin crisis occurred; the brothers John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated; the United States was increasingly involved in the Vietnam War; there were teach-ins, campus upheavals, race riots, Woodstock, love-ins, and communes; the new left was emerging; and so on. I was not immune to the effects of these events, personally or professionally. On a professional level, as a result of Preventing World War III (of which I was coeditor), my activities in the SPSSI, my various speeches, and our conflict studies, I became identified as one of the psychologists (along with Ralph White, Charles Osgood, Irving Janis, Jerome Frank, and Herbert Kelman) concerned with war and peace issues. I was invited to participate in meetings on the Berlin crisis, arms control, deterrence, Soviet-U.S. relations, and so on. Some involved high-level diplomats, others involved people in the defense establishment, others were at the United Nations, and still others were with citizen groups or social scientists. During the 1960s I was also trying to get more of my fellow psychologists involved in these issues. I took the opportunity of several addresses to speak to these issues: My 1960 SPSSI presidential address was “Psychological Alternatives to War”; my 1966 New York State Psychological Association talk was “Vietnam and the Start of World War III: Some Psychological Parallels”; my 1968 Eastern Psychological Association presentation was “Socially Relevant Science”; and my Kurt Lewin Memorial Award address was “Conflicts: Productive and Destructive.” About the time I was finishing the manuscript for my conflict book, in May 1972, I received from Melvin J. Lerner, then at the University of Waterloo, an invitation to participate in a conference titled “Contributions to a Just Society.” Mel had been an NYU social psychology student who had worked with Isadore Chein but had taken some courses with me. Shortly after the conference, he asked me to contribute to the Journal of Social Issues volume on the justice motive that he was editing. The two papers I wrote as a result of his urgings were “Awakening the Sense of Injustice” (Deutsch, 1974) and “Equity, Equality, and Need: What Determines Which Value Will Be Used as the Basis of Distributive Justice?” (Deutsch, 1976).

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In preparing these papers, I reviewed the existing work on the social psychology of justice and became quite dissatisfied with the dominant approach to this area: equity theory. My dissatisfaction led me to write an extensive critique of equity theory in 1977 (Deutsch, 1978) and, with the support of the National Science Foundation, to embark on a program of research on the social psychology of distributive justice. This program was, without my full recognition, something I had been engaged in for many years. Like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman, I had been “speaking justice” all the time without being aware of it. My dissertation study could be thought of as a study of two different systems of distributive justice: cooperative egalitarian and competitive meritocratic. Our research on bargaining and conflict had direct relevance to a central question in the social psychology of justice, namely, what are the conditions that facilitate the establishment of a stable system of justice among interactants that they will consider to be fair? The year 1982 was particularly satisfying for me. I made two important addresses. In one, my presidential address to the International Society of Political Psychology, I developed the concept of “malignant conflict” and described the processes involved in such conflicts and used this discussion as a basis for analyzing the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union (e.g., Deutsch, 1983a). The reaction of the audience was very gratifying. In various follow-ups (e.g., interviews, talks, conferences, pamphlets) it received considerable attention. The second address was my inaugural lecture as the E. L. Thorndike Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College. I admired Thorndike both as a psychologist and as a person (after reading an extensive biography of him), but I felt his views about race reflected the ignorance and bigotry prevalent in his time. In my opening remarks, I expressed my admiration for Thorndike but dissociated myself from his statements about racial and ethnic groups. My address was essentially a review of my work in social psychology. However, in a concluding section, I indicated my intention to help further develop the educational implications and applications of my work on cooperation and conflict resolution. To this end, I proposed establishing a center at Teachers College that would foster cooperative learning and constructive conflict resolution in the schools. At that time I vainly hoped that I might be able to induce a former student of mine to direct, administer, and raise funds for such a center; I never liked doing administrative work or raising funds, even though I had been reasonably successful in doing so during my career. In 1986, with the aid of a small grant from President Michael Timpane ($9,600), I started the center that I later ambitiously named the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR). In 1982 I also published the paper “Interdependence and Psychological Orientation,” which integrate several strands in my work. Mike Wish and I (while Mike was on the faculty of Teachers College) did some initial work on characterizing the fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations. This work grew out of some research that my students and I were doing on marital conflict; we felt it would be useful to go beyond personality descriptions of the individual spouses so that we would be able to characterize the couple as a couple in terms of their relations to one another. Using various data collection procedures and multidimensional scaling

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methods, we (Wish, Deutsch, & Kaplan, 1976) came up with five dimensions: cooperation-competition, power distribution, task-oriented versus social-emotional, formal versus informal, and intensity of the relationship. Previously, I had done much to characterize the social psychological properties of the first dimension, cooperation-competition. Now I sought to do this for the others. Undoubtedly influenced by the popularity of the cognitive approach, I labeled my first attempt “modes of thought.” But this title did not seem to be sufficiently inclusive. It appeared evident to me that cognitive processes differ in types of social relations, and I wanted to sketch the nature of some of these differences. However, I also thought that the psychological differences among the types of social relations were not confined to the cognitive processes: various motivational and moral dispositions were involved as well. It had been customary to consider these latter predispositions as more enduring characteristics of the individual and to label them “personality traits” or “character orientations.” Because my emphasis is on the situationally induced nature and, hence, temporariness of such predispositions, these labels did not seem fitting either. Thus I settled on the term “psychological orientation” to capture the basic theme of this paper, namely, that people orient themselves differently to different types of social relations and that these orientations reflect and are reflected in various cognitive processes, motivational tendencies, and moral dispositions. At the time, I was not doing research in cognitive social psychology, but I was sympathetic to it for two reasons. First, as someone greatly influenced by the Gestalt psychologists as well as by Lewin and Fritz Heider, I felt perceptual and cognitive processes were very important. Second, I felt it was a healthy reaction to the antimentalist views of B. F. Skinner and his followers, which were quite popular in psychology in the 1960s and 1970s. My sympathies for the cognitive approach possibly unconsciously led me to suppress the significant differences between it and my emphasis on psychological orientations. Psychological orientations involve the cognitive but also the motivational and moral orientations. In the 1980s, cognitive social psychologists neglected both the motivational and moral aspects of people’s orientations to social relations. After publishing Distributive Justice (1985), I sought funding from NSF for a program of basic research related to some of the ideas in my paper “Interdependence and Psychological Orientation.” It is unfortunate that my proposal was not funded. By this time our NIMH-supported, predoctoral training program was no longer in existence; the NIMH’s interest had turned toward postdoctoral training. Teachers College provided no funds for research or for graduate research assistants and little secretarial support or money for travel or equipment. It was also a period in which academic appointments became scarce. The consequence was that our doctoral students increasingly became part-time students who often had full-time jobs. In addition, they became more interested in nonacademic positions and more frequently decided to specialize in the organizational rather than in the social psychology component of our doctoral program in social and organizational psychology. In this context I discontinued my basic research, which had been primarily conducted in the laboratory. From 1985 on, I continued to write and publish

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papers mainly for small conferences related to conflict or justice, several as award addresses for honors I was receiving and a number by invitation from editors of books or special journal issues. Among the more than 60 articles I have published since 1985, several titles stand out: “On Negotiating the Non-Negotiable”; “Psychological Consequences of Different Forms of Social Organization”; “The Psychological Roots of Moral Exclusion”; “Sixty Years of Conflict”; “Equality and Economic Efficiency: Is There a Trade-Off?”; “Kurt Lewin: The Tough-Minded and Tenderhearted Scientist”; “Educating for a Peaceful World”; “The Effects of Training in Cooperative Learning and Conflict Resolution in an Alternative High School”; “Constructive Conflict Resolution: Theory, Research, and Practice”; “The Mediation of Interethnic Conflict” (with Peter Coleman); “William James: The First Peace Psychologist”; “Constructive Conflict Management for the World Today”; “Mediation and Difficult Conflicts”; “The Interplay Between International and External Conflict”; and “A Framework for Thinking About Oppression and Its Change.” I also contributed to and coedited The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice.

The International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution In 1986 I started the center that I promised in my Thorndike inaugural address. Our first activity was a workshop to which I invited the superintendents of school districts in and around New York City as well as representatives of several foundations who might become interested in financing the activities of our center. In addition to introductory remarks made by the president of Teachers College and me, the workshop consisted of a series of miniseminars chosen to reflect the kinds of activities in which our center would engage: cooperative learning, the constructive use of controversy in teaching, conflict resolution training in schools, the training of student mediators, and research evaluation of programs. A leading expert conducted each seminar (e.g., David and Roger Johnson led the seminars on cooperative learning and the constructive use of controversy). As the result of this workshop, one of the superintendents invited us to develop a program of cooperative learning in his wealthy, suburban school district and to evaluate the program. We sought without success to broaden the program to include conflict resolution training. However, the superintendent was helpful in arranging for us to meet with the superintendent of a nearby, comparable school district that would serve as a control. We approached several foundations for funds but were rejected, until I noticed in a publication that Hank Riecken was on the board of the W. T. Grant Foundation. I contacted Hank and told him of our plans and hopes, and he arranged for me to meet with the president and him. Both were enthusiastic about our plans, which called for support for 5 years at a level of $200,000 per year, and they asked me to write a detailed proposal for submission to the board. The board approved the project for 3 years and indicated that after the first year we

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should obtain half our funds from other sources. At the time I did not realize that this was a customary but nasty policy of many foundations—forcing one to remain continuously in a fund-raising mode. We began the project with a preliminary workshop in which David Johnson got a group of senior, influential teachers involved in cooperative learning. They became enthusiastic supporters. Our next step, which proved to be fatal, was to introduce the questionnaires, observational measures, and other recorded data we wished to obtain. We needed permissions from the school board and from the school personnel and parents of the students. When the school board learned that we were interested not only in studying academic achievement but also in measuring social skills, social relations, and psychological adjustment, they were horrified and canceled permission to do the study in their district. As the superintendent regretfully explained, the political attitudes of the board members were to the right of Attila the Hun, and they thought of mental health as a dangerous, explosive topic. At this point I was sorry that I had left the social psychology laboratory to do research in field settings. However, Ellen Raider, who had joined our center as training director after we were funded, came up with the center-saving suggestion that we move our project to an inner-city, alternative high school where she knew the principal and associate principal. Luckily, the foundation was happy to approve the move; they preferred that our research be done with inner-city youth. I shall not describe the many headaches and heartaches we had in carrying out our research, other than to indicate that we were training overworked and fatigued but dedicated teachers, most of whose students lived in poor and difficult circumstances and often did not have the reading or writing skills necessary for successful work as high school students. Also, to put it bluntly, the physical conditions of the school and neighborhood were horrible. Many aspects of the project were not executed as well as we had planned: the training of the teachers; the measurement of the effects on students; the direction of the study; the records kept by the school on student attendance, dropouts, and disruptions; and so on. By the standards of a laboratory experiment, it was very unsatisfactory research. Yet I must say that I came out of this study with a great deal of appreciation of those researchers who are foolhardy enough to leave the laboratory. They must have the kind of administrative and social skills, flexibility, ingenuity, statistical wizardry, and frustration tolerance rarely required in laboratory studies. Despite our problems, much to our surprise, we were able to demonstrate that our training had important and significant effects on the students. In brief, the data showed that as students improved in managing their conflicts (whether or not because of the training in conflict resolution or cooperative learning), they experienced increased social support and less victimization from others. This improvement in their relations with others led to greater self-esteem as well as fewer feelings of anxiety and depression and more frequent positive feelings of well-being. Their higher self-esteem, in turn, produced a greater sense of personal control over their fates. The increases in their sense of personal control and in their positive feelings of well-being led to higher academic performances. There is also indirect evidence that the work readiness and actual work performance of students were also improved.

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Our data further indicated that students, teachers, and administrators had generally positive views about the training and its results. This study was the first longitudinal study of the effects of cooperative learning and conflict resolution training conducted in a very difficult school environment. It was also the first to go beyond the measurement of consumer satisfaction. Its positive results were consistent with our theoretical model and with results obtained in smaller, brief studies in experimental classrooms. In part because the study was conducted in the New York City school system, the city’s board of education made a contract with the ICCCR in 1992–1994. The contract specified that the ICCCR would train two key faculty or staff people from every high school in New York City so that one would become sufficiently expert to be able to train students, teachers, and parents in constructive conflict resolution and the other would become sufficiently expert in mediation to be able to establish and administer an effective mediation center at the school, with students functioning as mediators. The ICCCR continues to do conflict resolution training in various school systems and in other contexts, such as the United Nations. More recently, as a prelude to offering graduate studies in conflict resolution at Teachers College, Ellen Raider conducted workshops on conflict resolution with various members of the faculty. The graduate studies now exist as one of the concentrations in the degree programs in social and organizational psychology as well as a certificate program for nondegree students. I have been the organizer for a faculty seminar on conflict resolution from which the book The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice was published by Jossey-Bass in 2000. I wrote four chapters for it and served as its editor along with Peter Coleman, who is the current director of the ICCCR. Recently, Eric Marcus joined Peter and me in editing a revised and expanded edition of the Handbook (Deutsch, Coleman, & Marcus, 2006). After the ending of the seminar on conflict resolution, I initiated another faculty seminar on oppression. It started with an earlier version of my paper “A Framework for Thinking About Oppression and Its Change.” The seminar gave rise to a conference on interrupting oppression and sustaining justice at Teachers College on February 27–28, 2004. In turn, the conference led to the publication of a special issue of the journal Social Justice Research in 2006.

Conclusion As I look back on my career, several things stand out for me. Luck. I was lucky to go to CCNY, which had two young faculty members, Max Hertzman and Walter Scott Neff, who stimulated my interest in Lewin and in social psychological research. I was extremely lucky to be a student at the RCGD at MIT, where I was able to become part of a small, innovative group of faculty and students who had a major impact on the development of modern social psychology. Moreover, my career got off to a quick start largely as a result of the prodding of

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Stuart Cook, who had me involved in writing two books shortly after I obtained my Ph.D. Also, I was very fortunate to be able to receive financial support for my research throughout most of my career. In addition, I have had the opportunity to work with many excellent, productive students who have stimulated me and contributed much to my research. Not least, I was lucky enough to marry a woman whose esthetic sensibility and practical skills helped to create a congenial and supportive home environment that enabled me to focus my attention on scholarly activities rather than on such household activities as fixing things (which I never could do anyway). Continuing themes. My work on social psychology has been dominated by two continuing themes with which I have been preoccupied throughout my career. One is my intellectual interest in cooperation and competition, which has been expressed in my theorizing and research on the effects of cooperation and competition, our studies of conflict processes, and our work on distributive justice. I have continued to believe that these foci are central to understanding social life and also that a “social” social psychology rather than an “individual” social psychology would have these as its fundamental concerns. The second continuing interrelated theme has been the development of my work so that it has social relevance to key social problems. Sometimes images, derived from such social problems as war and peace, prejudice, marital conflict, and injustice, would be the starting point for the development of a theoretical analysis or an experimental study. At other times I would use theory and research (other social scientists’ as well as my own) in an attempt to shed light on important social issues. The two themes of my career have contributed to important applications, particularly in the field of education, where I am considered to be one of the parents of cooperative learning and conflict resolution training. Episodic research. Occasionally, I strayed from the two themes just described to do single studies that expressed my reservations about some of the fashionable theorizing and research. I took potshots at Solomon Asch’s neglect of group factors in his conformity studies, at Festinger’s omission of defensiveness in his dissonance theorizing, at equity theory’s assumption of greater productivity when people are rewarded in proportion to their performance, at social perception studies that ignored the social and institutional context in which social acts are imbedded, and at Henri Tajfel’s initial assumption that the mere awareness of a difference among a collection of individuals will promote group formation. My straying was usually short-lived, because my primary interests were in the two themes described above and I was not sufficiently energetic to take on additional themes. The social context. I grew up in a time when, as a Jew, I experienced many instances of prejudice, blatant as well as subtle, and could observe the gross acts of injustice being suffered by blacks. In my youth and adolescence, there was the economic depression, union organizing, the Spanish civil war, and the emergence of fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism. I was politically engaged—contributing lunch money to the Spanish loyalists, organizing strikes in high school and in a summer resort, participating in a sit-in against the fascist ambassador, and so forth. It is no wonder that I was attracted to Lewin, whom I saw as taking psychology in

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a direction that would enable it to contribute to the development of a democratic, cooperative society that was free of prejudice. The activist theme in my career as a social psychologist undoubtedly reflects the social context of my youth. The social context also helps to explain why I did not become a political activist or union organizer. In my family, among my fellow (mostly Jewish) students, and in my high school and college, there was a strong emphasis on ideas and intellectual achievement. Our heroes were those who contributed to the world through their ideas—Darwin, Marx, Freud, and Einstein. They had exemplified Lewin’s dictum, recalled earlier, that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory.” This has been the second theme of my career. I conclude with the hope that future social psychologists will be more concerned than we have been with characterizing the socially relevant properties of individuals and the psychologically relevant attributes of social structures. To oversimplify it, I hope that they will provide a successful integration of the orientations of three of the intellectual heroes of my youth: Freud, Marx, and Lewin.

References Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper. Allport, G. W. (1954a). The historical background of modern social psychology. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1). Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley. Allport, G. W. (1954b). The nature of prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Deutsch, M. (1949a). An experimental study of effects of cooperation and competition upon group processes. Human Relations, 2, 199–231. Deutsch, M. (1949b). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129–151. Deutsch, M. (1961). The interpretation of praise and criticism as a function of their social context. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62, 391–400. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1974). Awakening the sense of injustice. In M. Lerner & M. Ross (Eds.), The quest for justice. New York: Holt. Deutsch, M. (1978). The social psychology of justice. In Proceedings of the international symposium on social psychology (pp. 23–46). Kyoto, Japan: Japanese Group Dynamics Association. Deutsch, M. (1982). Interdependence and psychological orientation. In V. Derlega & J. L. Grzelek (Eds.), Cooperation and helping behavior: Theories and research (pp. 15–42). New York: Academic. Deutsch, M. (1983a). Conflict resolution: Theory and practice. Political Psychology, 4, 431–453. Deutsch, M. (1983b). Current perspectives on justice. European Journal of Social Psychology, 13, 305–319. Deutsch, M. (1983c). Preventing World War III: A psychological perspective. European Journal of Social Psychology, 3, 3–31. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M., Coleman, P. T., & Marcus, E. (2006). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice (revised and enlarged 2nd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Deutsch, M., & Collins, M. E. (1951). Interracial housing: A psychological evaluation of a social experiment. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

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Deutsch, M., & Krauss, R. (1962). Studies of interpersonal bargaining. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 6, 52–76. Deutsch, M., & Krauss, R. (1965). Theories in social psychology. New York: Basic Books. Jahoda, M., Deutsch, M., & Cook, S. W. (1951). Research methods in social relations. New York: Holt and Dryden. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction. Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lewin, K. (1938). The conceptual representation and measurement of psychological forces. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Wish, M., Deutsch, M., & Kaplan, S. (1976). Perceived dimensions of interpersonal relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 409–420. Wright, Q., Evan, W. M., & Deutsch, M. (Eds.). (1962). Preventing World War III: Some proposals. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Chapter 2

Cooperation and Competition Morton Deutsch

Some time ago, in the garden of a friend’s house, my 5-year-old son and his chum were struggling over possession of a water hose. (They were in conflict.) Each wanted to use it first to water the garden. (They had a competitive orientation.) Each was trying to tug it away from the other and both were crying. Each was very frustrated, and neither was able to use the hose to sprinkle the flowers as he’d desired. After reaching a deadlock in this tug-of-war, they began to punch one another and call each other names. (As a result of their competitive approach, the conflict took a destructive course for both of them—producing frustration, crying, and violence.) Now imagine a different scenario. The garden consists mainly of two sections, flowers and vegetables. Each kid wants to use the hose first. Let’s suppose they want to resolve their conflict amicably. (They have a cooperative orientation.) One says to the other, “Let’s flip a coin to see who uses the hose first.” (A fair procedure for resolving the conflict is suggested.) The other agrees and suggests that the loser be given the right to select which section of the garden he waters. They both agree to the suggestion. (A cooperative, win-win agreement is reached.) Their agreements are implemented and both kids feel happy and good about one another. (These are common effects of a cooperative or constructive approach to a conflict.) As this example illustrates, whether the participants in a conflict have a cooperative orientation or a competitive one is decisive in determining its course and outcomes. This chapter is concerned with understanding the processes involved in cooperation and competition, their effects, and the factors that contribute to developing a cooperative or competitive relationship. It is important to understand the nature of cooperation and competition since almost all conflicts are mixed-motive, containing elements of both cooperation and competition.

Deutsch, M. (2006). Cooperation and competition. In M. Deutsch, P. T. Coleman, & E. C. Marcus (Eds.), The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and practice (23–42). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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A Theory of Cooperation and Competition The theory being presented here was initially developed by Morton Deutsch (1949a, 1949b, 1973, 1985) and much elaborated by David W. Johnson (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). The Johnsons have provided the most extensive summary of the theory and the research bearing on it; their 1989 book and 2003 paper should be consulted for greater detail. The theory has two basic ideas. One relates to the type of interdependence among goals of the people involved in a given situation. The other pertains to the type of action taken by the people involved. I identify two basic types of goal interdependence: positive (where the goals are linked in such a way that the amount or probability of a person’s goal attainment is positively correlated with the amount or probability of another obtaining his goal) and negative (where the goals are linked in such a way that the amount or probability of goal attainment is negatively correlated with the amount or probability of the other’s goal attainment). To put it colloquially, if you’re positively linked with another, then you sink or swim together; with negative linkage, if the other sinks, you swim, and if the other swims, you sink. It is well to realize that few situations are “purely” positive or negative. In most situations, people have a mixture of goals so that it is common for some of their goals initially to be positive and some negatively interdependent. In this section, for analytical purposes, I discuss pure situations. In mixed situations, the relative strengths of the two types of goal interdependency, as well as their general orientation to one another, largely determine the nature of the conflict process. I also characterize two basic types of action by an individual: “effective actions,” which improve the actor’s chances of obtaining a goal, and “bungling actions,” which worsen the actor’s chances of obtaining the goal. (For the purpose of simplicity, I use dichotomies for my basic concepts; the dichotomous types of interdependence and the dichotomous types of actions are, I assume, polar ends of continua.) I then combine types of interdependence and types of action to posit how they jointly affect three basic social psychological processes that are discussed later in this chapter: “substitutability,” “attitudes,” and “inducibility.” People’s goals may be linked for various reasons. Thus, positive interdependence can result from people liking one another, being rewarded in terms of their joint achievement, needing to share a resource or overcome an obstacle together, holding common membership or identification with a group whose fate is important to them, being unable to achieve their task goals unless they divide up the work, being influenced by personality and cultural orientation, being bound together because they are treated this way by a common enemy or an authority, and so on. Similarly, with regard to negative interdependence, it can result from people disliking one another; or from their being rewarded in such a way that the more the other gets of the reward, the less one gets, and so on. In addition to positive and negative interdependence, it is well to recognize that there can be a lack of interdependence, or independence, such that the activities and

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fate of the people involved do not affect one another, directly or indirectly. If they are completely independent of one another, no conflict arises; the existence of a conflict implies some form of interdependence. One further point. Asymmetries may exist with regard to the degree of interdependence in a relationship; suppose that what you do or what happens to you may have a considerable effect on me, but what I do or what happens to me may have little impact on you. I am more dependent on you than you are on me. In the extreme case, you may be completely independent of me and I may be highly dependent on you. As a consequence of this asymmetry, you have greater power and influence in the relationship than I. This power may be general if the asymmetry exists in many situations, or it may be situation-specific if the asymmetry occurs only in a particular situation. A master has general power over a slave, while an auto mechanic repairing my car’s electrical system has situation-specific power. The three concepts mentioned previously—substitutability, attitudes, and inducibility—are vital to understanding the social and psychological processes involved in creating the major effects of cooperation and competition. Substitutability (how a person’s actions can satisfy another person’s intentions) is central to the functioning of all social institutions (the family, industry, schools), to the division of labor, and to role specialization. Unless the activities of other people can substitute for yours, you are like a person stranded on a desert island alone: you have to build your own house, find or produce your own food, protect yourself from harmful animals, treat your ailments and illnesses, educate yourself about the nature of your new environment and about how to do all these tasks, and so on, without the help of others. Being alone, you can neither create children nor have a family. Substitutability permits you to accept the activities of others in fulfilling your needs. Negative substitutability involves active rejection and effort to counteract the effects of another’s activities. Attitudes refer to the predisposition to respond evaluatively, favorably or unfavorably, to aspects of one’s environment or self. Through natural selection, evolution has ensured that all living creatures have the capacity to respond positively to stimuli that are beneficial to them and negatively to those that are harmful. They are attracted to, approach, receive, ingest, like, enhance, and otherwise act positively toward beneficial objects, events, or other creatures; in contrast, they are repelled by harmful objects and circumstances and avoid, eject, attack, dislike, negate, and otherwise act negatively toward them. This inborn tendency to act positively toward the beneficial and negatively toward the harmful is the foundation on which the human potentials for cooperation and love as well as for competition and hate develop. The basic psychological orientation of cooperation implies the positive attitude that “we are for each other,” “we benefit one another”; competition, by contrast, implies the negative attitude that “we are against one another,” and in its extreme form, “you are out to harm me.” Inducibility refers to the readiness to accept another’s influence to do what he or she wants; negative inducibility refers to the readiness to reject or obstruct fulfillment of what the other wants. The complement of substitutability is inducibility.

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You are willing to be helpful to another whose actions are helpful to you, but not to someone whose actions are harmful. In fact, you reject any request to help the other engage in harmful actions and, if possible, obstruct or interfere with these actions if they occur.

The Effects of Cooperation and Competition Thus, the theory predicts that if you are in a positively interdependent relationship with someone who bungles, his bungling is not a substitute for effective actions you intended; thus the bungling is viewed negatively. In fact, when your net-playing tennis partner in a doubles game allows an easy shot to get past him, you have to extend yourself to prevent being harmed by the error. On the other hand, if your relationship is one of negative interdependence, and the other person bungles (as when your tennis opponent double-faults), your opponent’s bungle substitutes for an effective action on your part, and it is regarded positively or valued. The reverse is true for effective actions. An opponent’s effective actions are not substitutable for yours and are negatively valued; a teammate can induce you to help him make an effective action, but you are likely to try to prevent or obstruct a bungling action by your teammate. In contrast, you are willing to help an opponent bungle, but your opponent is not likely to induce you to help him make an effective action (which, in effect, harms your chances of obtaining your goal). The theory of cooperation and competition, then, goes on to make further predictions about different aspects of intrapersonal, interpersonal, intragroup, and intergroup processes from the predictions about substitutability, attitudes, and inducibility. Thus, assuming that the individual actions in a group are more frequently effective than bungling, among the predictions that follow from the theory are that cooperative relations (those in which the goals of the parties involved are predominantly positively interdependent), as compared with competitive ones, show more of these positive characteristics: 1. Effective communication is exhibited. Ideas are verbalized, and group members are attentive to one another, accepting of the ideas of other members, and influenced by them. They have fewer difficulties in communicating with or understanding others. 2. Friendliness, helpfulness, and less obstructiveness is expressed in the discussions. Members also are more satisfied with the group and its solutions and favorably impressed by the contributions of the other group members. In addition, members of the cooperative groups rate themselves high in desire to win the respect of their colleagues and in obligation to the other members. 3. Coordination of effort, division of labor, orientation to task achievement, orderliness in discussion, and high productivity are manifested in the cooperative groups (if the group task requires effective communication, coordination of effort, division of labor, or sharing of resources).

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4. Feeling of agreement with the ideas of others and a sense of basic similarity in beliefs and values, as well as confidence in one’s own ideas and in the value that other members attach to those ideas, are obtained in the cooperative groups. 5. Recognizing and respecting the other by being responsive to the other’s needs. 6. Willingness to enhance the other’s power (for example, the knowledge, skills, resources, and so on) to accomplish the other’s goals increases. As the other’s capabilities are strengthened, you are strengthened; they are of value to you as well as to the other. Similarly, the other is enhanced from your enhancement and benefits from your growing capabilities and power. 7. Defining conflicting interests as a mutual problem to be solved by collaborative effort facilitates recognizing the legitimacy of each other’s interests and the necessity to search for a solution responsive to the needs of all. It tends to limit rather than expand the scope of conflicting interests. Attempts to influence the other tend to be confined to processes of persuasion. In contrast, a competitive process has the opposite effects: 1. Communication is impaired as the conflicting parties seek to gain advantage by misleading the other through use of false promises, ingratiation tactics, and disinformation. It is reduced and seen as futile as they recognize that they cannot trust one another’s communications to be honest or informative. 2. Obstructiveness and lack of helpfulness lead to mutual negative attitudes and suspicion of one another’s intentions. One’s perceptions of the other tend to focus on the person’s negative qualities and ignore the positive. 3. The parties to the process are unable to divide their work, duplicating one another’s efforts such that they become mirror images; if they do divide the work, they feel the need to check what the other is doing continuously. 4. The repeated experience of disagreement and critical rejection of ideas reduces confidence in oneself as well as the other. 5. The conflicting parties seek to enhance their own power and to reduce the power of the other. Any increase in the power of the other is seen as threatening to oneself. 6. The competitive process stimulates the view that the solution of a conflict can only be imposed by one side on the other, which in turn leads to using coercive tactics such as psychological as well as physical threats and violence. It tends to expand the scope of the issues in conflict as each side seeks superiority in power and legitimacy. The conflict becomes a power struggle or a matter of moral principle and is no longer confined to a specific issue at a given time and place. Escalating the conflict increases its motivational significance to the participants and may make a limited defeat less acceptable and more humiliating than a mutual disaster. As the conflict escalates, it perpetuates itself by such processes as autistic hostility, self-fulfilling prophecies, and unwitting commitments. Autistic hostility involves breaking off contact and communication with the other; the result is that the hostility is perpetuated because one has no opportunity to learn that it

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may be based on misunderstandings or misjudgments, nor to learn if the other has changed for the better. Self-fulfilling prophecies are those wherein you engage in hostile behavior toward another because of a false assumption that the other has done or is preparing to do something harmful to you; your false assumption comes true when it leads you to engage in hostile behavior that then provokes the other to react in a hostile manner to you. The dynamics of an escalating, destructive conflict have the inherent quality of a folie à deux in which the self-fulfilling prophecies of each side mutually reinforce one another. As a result, both sides are right to think that the other is provocative, untrustworthy, and malevolent. Each side, however, tends to be blind to how it as well as the other have contributed to this malignant process. In the case of unwitting commitments, during the course of escalating conflict the parties not only overcommit to rigid positions but also may unwittingly commit to negative attitudes and perceptions, beliefs, defenses against the other’s expected attacks, and investments involved in carrying out their conflictual activities. Thus, during an escalated conflict, a person (a group, a nation) may commit to the view that the other is an evil enemy, the belief that the other is out to take advantage of oneself (one’s group, nation), the conviction that one has to be constantly vigilant and ready to defend against the danger the other poses to one’s vital interests, and also invest in the means of defending oneself as well as attacking the other. After a protracted conflict, it is hard to give up a grudge, to disarm without feeling vulnerable, as well as to give up the emotional charge associated with being mobilized and vigilant in relation to the conflict. As Johnson and Johnson (1989) have detailed, these ideas have given rise to a large number of research studies indicating that a cooperative process (as compared to a competitive one) leads to greater group productivity, more favorable interpersonal relations, better psychological health, and higher self-esteem. Research has also shown that more constructive resolution of conflicts results from cooperative as opposed to competitive processes. For understanding the nature of the processes involved in conflict, this last research finding is of central theoretical and practical significance. It suggests that constructive processes of conflict resolution are similar to cooperative processes of problem solving, and destructive processes of conflict resolution are similar to competitive processes. Since our prior theoretical and research work gave us considerable knowledge about the nature of the processes involved in cooperation and competition, it is evident that this knowledge provides detailed insight into the nature of the processes entailed in constructive and destructive conflict resolution. This kind of knowledge contributes to understanding what processes are involved in producing good or bad outcomes of conflict. There are many ways of characterizing the outcomes of a conflict: satisfaction-dissatisfaction of the parties, material benefits and costs, improvement or worsening of their relationship, effects on self-esteem and reputation, precedents set, kinds of lessons learned, effects on third-parties (such as children of divorcing parents), and so on. Thus, there is reason

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to believe that a cooperative-constructive process of conflict resolution leads to such good outcomes as mutual benefits and satisfaction, strengthening relationship, positive psychological effects, and so on, while a competitive-destructive process leads to material losses and dissatisfaction, worsening relationship, and negative psychological effects in at least one party (the loser if it is a win-lose outcome) or both parties (if it is a lose-lose outcome).

Constructive and Destructive Competition Competition can vary from destructive to constructive: unfair, unregulated competition being at the destructive end; fair, regulated competition being in between; and constructive competition being at the positive end. In constructive competition, the losers as well as the winners gain. Thus, in a tennis match that takes the form of constructive competition, the winner suggests how the loser can improve her game, offers an opportunity for the loser to learn and practice skills, and makes the match an enjoyable or worthwhile experience for the loser. In constructive competition, winners see to it that losers are better off, or at least not worse off than they were before the competition. The major difference, for example, between constructive controversy and competitive debate is that in the former people discuss their differences with the objective of clarifying them and attempting to find a solution that integrates the best thoughts that emerge during the discussion, no matter who articulates them (see Chapter Three for a fuller discussion). There is no winner and no loser; both win if during the controversy each party comes to deeper insights and enriched views of the matter that is initially in controversy. Constructive controversy is a process for constructively coping with the inevitable differences that people bring to cooperative interaction because it uses differences in understanding, perspective, knowledge, and world view as valued resources. By contrast, in competitive contests or debates there is usually a winner and a loser. The party judged to have “the best”—ideas, skills, knowledge, and so on—typically wins, while the other, who is judged to be less good, typically loses. Competition evaluates and ranks people based on their capacity for a particular task, rather than integrating various contributions. By my emphasis throughout this chapter, I do not mean to suggest that competition produces no benefits. Competition is part of everyday life. Acquiring the skills necessary to compete effectively can be of considerable value. Moreover, competition in a cooperative, playful context can be fun. It enables one to enact and experience, in a nonserious setting, symbolic emotional dramas relating to victory and defeat, life and death, power and helplessness, dominance and submission; these dramas have deep personal and cultural roots. In addition, competition is a useful social mechanism for selecting those who are more able to perform the activities involved in the competition. Further, when no objective, criterionreferenced basis for measurement of performance exists, the relative performance of students affords a crude yardstick. Nevertheless, serious problems are associated with competition when it does not occur in a cooperative context and if it is not

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effectively regulated by fair rules (see Deutsch, 1973, pp. 377–388, for a discussion of regulating competition).

Initiating Cooperation and Competition If we know that cooperative and competitive processes have important effects on conflict resolution, a question follows: What initiates or gives rise to one or the other process? We did much research (see Deutsch, 1973) in an attempt to find the answer. The results of our many studies fell into a pattern I slowly began to grasp. They seemed explainable by an assumption I have immodestly labeled “Deutsch’s Crude Law of Social Relations”: The characteristic processes and effects elicited by a given type of social relationship also tend to elicit that type of social relationship.

Thus, cooperation induces and is induced by perceived similarity in beliefs and attitudes, readiness to be helpful, openness in communication, trusting and friendly attitudes, sensitivity to common interests and deemphasis of opposed interests, orientation toward enhancing mutual power rather than power differences, and so on. Similarly, competition induces and is induced by use of tactics of coercion, threat, or deception; attempts to enhance the power differences between oneself and the other; poor communication; minimization of the awareness of similarities in values and increased sensitivity to opposed interests; suspicious and hostile attitudes; the importance, rigidity, and size of issues in conflict; and so on. In other words, if one has systematic knowledge of the effects of cooperative and competitive processes, one has systematic knowledge of the conditions that typically give rise to such processes, and by extension to the conditions that affect whether a conflict takes a constructive or destructive course. My early theory of cooperation and competition is a theory of the effects of cooperative and competitive processes. Hence, from the Crude Law of Social Relations, it follows that this theory brings insight into the conditions that give rise to cooperative and competitive processes. This law is certainly crude. It expresses surface similarities between effects and causes; the basic relationships are genotypical rather than phenotypical. The surface effects of cooperation and competition are due to the underlying type of interdependence (positive or negative) and type of action (effective or bungling), the basic social psychological processes involved in the theory (substitutability, attitudes, and inducibility), and the cultural or social medium and situational context in which these processes are expressed. Thus, how a positive attitude is expressed in an effective, positively interdependent relationship depends on what is appropriate to the cultural or social medium and situational context; that is, presumably one would not seek to express it in a way that is humiliating or embarrassing or likely to be experienced negatively by one’s partner. Similarly, the effectiveness of any typical effect of cooperation or competition as an initiating or inducing condition of a cooperative or competitive process is not due

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to its phenotype but rather to the inferred genotype of type of interdependence and type of action. Thus, in most social media and social contexts, “perceived similarity in basic values” is highly suggestive of the possibility of a positive linkage between oneself and the other. However, we are likely to see ourselves as negatively linked in a context that leads each of us to recognize that similarities in values impel seeking something that is in scarce supply and available for only one of us. Also, it is evident that although threats are mostly perceived in a way that suggests a negative linkage, any threat perceived as intended to compel you to do something that is good for you or that you feel you should do is apt to be suggestive of a positive linkage. Although the law is crude, my impression is that it is reasonably accurate; phenotypes are often indicative of the underlying genotypes. Moreover, it is a synthesizing principle, which integrates and summarizes a wide range of social psychological phenomena. The typical effects of a given relationship tend to induce that relationship, similarly, it seems that any of the typical effects of a given relationship tend to induce the other typical effects. For example, among the typical effects of a cooperative relationship are positive attitudes, perception of similarities, open communication, and orientation toward mutual enhancement. One can integrate much of the literature on the determinants of positive and negative attitudes in terms of the other associated effects of cooperation and competition. Thus, positive attitudes result from perceptions of similarity, open communication, and so on. Similarly, many of the determinants of effective communication can be linked to the other typical effects of cooperation or competition, such as positive attitudes and power sharing.

Summary of the Theory of Conflict Resolution In brief, the theory equates a constructive process of conflict resolution with an effective cooperative problem-solving process in which the conflict is the mutual problem to be resolved cooperatively. It also equates a destructive process of conflict resolution with a competitive process in which the conflicting parties are involved in a competition or struggle to determine who wins and who loses; often, the outcome of the struggle is a loss for both parties. The theory further indicates that a cooperative-constructive process of conflict resolution is fostered by the typical effects of cooperation. The theory of cooperation and competition outlined in the beginning of this chapter is a well-verified theory of the effects of cooperation and competition and thus allows insight into what can give rise to a constructive or destructive process. The theory cannot serve as a “cookbook” for a practitioner in the field of conflict resolution. It is a general intellectual framework for understanding what goes on in conflicts and how to intervene in them. Additionally, understanding and intervening in a specific conflict requires specific knowledge about the conflicting parties, their social contexts, their aspirations, their conflict orientations, the social norms, and so on. Cooperation-competition, although of central importance, is only one factor influencing the course of conflict. The other chapters in this volume detail some of

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the other ingredients affecting conflict: power and influence, group problem solving, social perception and cognition, creativity, intrapsychic conflict, and personality. A practitioner must develop a mosaic of theories relevant to the specific situation of interest, rather than relying on any single one. The symptoms or difficulties in one situation may require emphasis on the theoretical theme related to power; in another, it may require focusing on problem-solving deficiencies.

Implications of the Theory for Understanding Conflict Kurt Lewin, a famous psychologist, used to tell his students, of whom I was one, that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory.” To this point, I have presented the basic ideas of a good theory; in what follows, I indicate their usefulness in conflict situations.

The Importance of a Cooperative Orientation The most important implication of cooperation-competition theory is that a cooperative or win-win orientation to resolving a conflict enormously facilitates constructive resolution, while a competitive or win-lose orientation hinders it. It is easier to develop and maintain a win-win attitude if you have social support for it. The social support can come from friends, coworkers, employers, the media, or your community. To have a win-win attitude in a hostile environment, it is valuable to become part of a network of people or a member of groups with similar orientations that can extend social support to you. It is also helpful to develop the personal strengths and skills that are useful in bucking the tide. If you are the manager in a system (for example, a principal in a school, a CEO in a company, a parent in a family), it is worthwhile to recognize that basic change in the system involves more than educating students, employees, or children to have a win-win orientation. It also involves educating yourself and other key people in the system such as supervisors, staff, teachers, and parents so that their actions reflect and support a win-win orientation. Additionally, it often requires fundamental change in the incentive structure so that the rewards, salaries, grades, perks, etc., in the system do not foster a win-lose relationship among the people in it.

Reframing The second most important implication of the theory has to do with the cooperative process that is involved in constructive conflict resolution. At the heart of this process is reframing the conflict as a mutual problem to be resolved (or solved)

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through joint cooperative efforts. Reframing helps to develop a cooperative orientation to the conflict even if the goals of the conflicting parties are seen, initially, to be negatively interdependent. A cooperative orientation to what is initially a win-lose conflict leads the parties to search for just procedures to determine who is the winner as well as for helping the loser gain through compensation or other means. Reframing has inherent within it the assumption that whatever resolution is achieved, it is acceptable to each party and considered to be just by both. This assumption is made explicit when one or both parties to a conflict communicate to the other something like, “I won’t be satisfied with any agreement unless you also feel satisfied with it and consider it to be just, and I assume that you feel the same way. Is my assumption correct?” Thus, consider a school that is developing site-based management procedures but faces a conflict. One group of teachers, mainly white, insists on having teachers elected to the SBM executive committee from the various academic departments by majority vote. Another group of teachers, the Black Teachers Caucus, demand that several members of the committee be from minority groups to represent their interests. This conflict can be reformulated as a joint problem: “How to develop SBM procedures that empower and are responsive to the interests and needs of faculty, parents, and students from minority groups without abandoning the regular democratic procedures whereby teachers are elected to the SBM committee by their respective departments?” This joint problem is not easy to solve, but similar problems have been faced and resolved in many organizations. There is reason to believe that if the conflicting groups—the SBM committee members elected by their departments and the BTC—define the conflict as a joint problem to be resolved cooperatively, they can come up with a solution that is mutually satisfactory.

The Norms of Cooperation Of course, the parties are more apt to succeed in reframing their conflict into a mutual problem if the participants abide by the norms of cooperative behavior, even when in conflict, and have the skills that facilitate effective cooperation. The norms of cooperative behavior basically are similar to those for respectful, responsible, honest, empowering, and caring behavior toward friends or fellow group members. Some of these norms, particularly relevant to conflict, are the following: • Place the disagreements in perspective by identifying common ground and common interests. • When there is disagreement, address the issues and refrain from making personal attacks. • When there is disagreement, seek to understand the other’s views from his or her perspective; try to feel what it would be like if you were on the other’s side.

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• Build on the ideas of the other, fully acknowledging their value. • Emphasize the positive in the other and the possibilities of constructive resolution of the conflict. Limit and control expression of your negative feelings so that they are primarily directed at the other’s violation of cooperative norms (if that occurs), or at the other’s defeatism. • Take responsibility for the harmful consequences—unwitting as well as intended—of what you do and say; seek to undo the harm as well as openly accept responsibility and make sincere apology for it. • If the other harms you, be willing to forgive if the other accepts responsibility for doing so, sincerely apologizes, and is willing to try to undo it; seek reconciliation rather than nurturing an injury or grudge. • Be responsive to the other’s legitimate needs. • Empower the other to contribute effectively to the cooperative effort; solicit the other’s views, listen responsively, share information, and otherwise help the other—when necessary—be an active, effective participant in the cooperative problem-solving process. • Be appropriately honest. Being dishonest, attempting to mislead or deceive, is of course a violation of cooperative norms. However, one can be unnecessarily and inappropriately truthful. In most relationships, there is usually some ambivalence, a mixture of positive as well as negative thoughts and feelings about the other and about oneself. Unless the relationship has developed to a very high level of intimacy, communicating every suspicion, doubt, fear, and sense of weakness one has about oneself or the other is apt to be damaging to the relationship— particularly if the communication is blunt, unrationalized, and unmodulated. In effect, one should be open and honest in communication but appropriately so, realistically taking into account the consequences of what one says or does not say and the current state of the relationship. • Throughout conflict, remain a moral person—therefore, a person who is caring and just—and consider the other as a member of one’s moral community— therefore, as a person who is entitled to care and justice. In the heat of conflict, there is often a tendency to violate the norms of cooperation. For example, you begin to attack the other as a person (“you’re stubborn,” “you’re selfish,” “you’re unreasonable,” “you’re inconsiderate,” “you’re narcissistic,” “you’re paranoid”). Recognize when you start to do this, stop, apologize, and explain what made you angry enough to want to belittle and hurt the other. If the other starts to do this to you, then interrupt, explain why you are interrupting, and try to resume a mutually respectful dialogue (“You’re calling me names; that’s making me angry and makes me want to retaliate, so pretty soon we’ll be in a name-calling contest and that will get us nowhere. Let’s stick to the issues and be respectful of one another. If you’re angry with me, tell me why. If I’m at fault, I’ll remedy it.”). It is wise to recognize that you, as well as the other, have hot buttons that, if pressed, are likely to evoke strong emotions. The emotions evoked may be anxiety, anger, rage, fear, depression, withdrawal, and so on. It is important to know your own hot buttons and how you tend to react when they are pressed, so that you can

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control your reactions in that event. Sometimes you need to take time out to control your emotional reactions and to consider an appropriate response to what elicits them. Similarly, it is valuable to know the other’s hot buttons so as to avoid pressing them and provoking disruptive emotions in the other.

The Values Underlying Constructive Conflict Resolution The norms of cooperation and constructive conflict resolution reflect some basic values, to which people who are “profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines” can adhere (Rawls, 1996, p. xxxix). A reasonable doctrine includes conceptions of the values and norms with regard to conflict that people who adhere to another reasonable doctrine (as well as those who adhere to one’s own) can endorse and be expected to follow during conflict. Thus, “pro-life” and “pro-choice” advocates in the abortion conflict may have profoundly differing views, but they are both components of reasonable doctrines if the adherents to each are willing to follow common values in dealing with their conflict about abortion. Among such values are reciprocity, human equality, shared community, fallibility, and nonviolence. A brief discussion of these interrelated values follows. Reciprocity. This is the value involved in the maxim “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” My understanding of the maxim as it applies to conflict requires each party to treat the other with the fairness that it would normatively expect if in the other’s position. It assumes reciprocity from the other— fairness to and from the other. The fairness in behavior, in process, and in outcomes expected is normative. As defined by one’s culture, it is how the conflicting parties should or should not behave toward one another if they are, at a minimum, to avoid a destructive conflict or, more positively, to promote constructive management of their conflict. The norms against violence, disrespect, deceit, and irresponsibility are widespread standards for avoiding destructive conflict. Human Equality. This value implies that all human beings are equally entitled to just and respectful treatment, with consideration for their needs, and entitled to such basic liberties as freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, as well as freedom from coercion. You are entitled to this from the other, but the other is entitled to this from you too. Human equality does not imply that people necessarily have the same status, privileges, power, needs, or wealth. It does imply that such differences are not the consequence of one’s violation of the other’s entitlements. Shared Community. Implicit in constructive conflict resolution is mutual recognition of being part of a broader community that members wish to preserve, a community sharing some key values and norms; such recognition occurs despite important differences between oneself and the other. Fallibility. The sources of disagreement between reasonable people are manifold. Disagreements may arise from such sources as the nature of the evidence, the weight to be given to types of evidence, and the vagueness of the moral or other concepts involved, as well as from differences in basic values or worldviews. Reasonable

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people understand that their own judgment as well as the judgment of others may be fallible. Nonviolence. This value implies that coercive tactics are not employed, by you or the other, to obtain agreement or consent. Such tactics include physical or psychological violence (for example, humiliation), destruction of property or other valued goods, harm to one’s life chances (a potential career), harm to one’s loved ones, and so on.

Implications for Managing Conflict In prior sections, discussion focused on the attitudes, norms, and values that foster cooperation. These are necessary but not in themselves sufficient. Knowledge and skills are also important in promoting constructive resolution of a conflict. Knowledge of the theory presented earlier in this chapter offers a useful framework for organizing one’s thinking about the social psychological consequences of cooperation and competition as well as the conditions that lead to one rather than the other. It is a way of orienting oneself to situations not previously encountered. Along with the other theories discussed in this book, it enlarges one’s knowledge of the range of conditions to be considered as one wishes to develop and maintain a constructive, cooperative process of conflict resolution and to prevent developing a destructive process. Skills are also vitally important if one wishes to develop and implement successfully an effective, cooperative problem-solving process. There has not been much systematic discussion of the skills involved in constructive solutions to conflict. There are, I believe, three main kinds useful to the participants in a conflict as well as to third parties (such as mediators, conciliators, counselors, or therapists) who are called on to provide assistance to conflicting parties. For convenience, I label them “rapport-building skills,” “cooperative conflict resolution skills,” and “group process and decision-making skills.” First, there are the skills involved in establishing effective working relationships with each of the conflicting parties, and between the conflicting parties if you are the mediator; or with the other, if you are a participant. Some of the components of this broad category include such skills as breaking the ice; reducing fears, tensions, and suspicion; overcoming resistance to negotiation; establishing a framework for civil discourse and interaction; and fostering realistic hope and optimism. Thus, before negotiations begin between two individuals or groups perceiving each other as adversaries, it is often useful to have informal social gatherings or meetings in which the adversaries can get to know one another as human beings who share some similar interests and values. Skill in breaking the ice and creating a safe, friendly atmosphere for interaction between the adversaries is helpful in developing the prenegotiation experiences likely to lead to effective negotiations about the issues in dispute. A second, related set of skills concerns developing and maintaining a cooperative conflict resolution process among the parties throughout their conflict. These

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are the skills that are usually emphasized in practicum courses or workshops on conflict resolution. They include identifying the type of conflict in which you are involved; reframing the issues so the conflict is perceived as a mutual problem to be resolved cooperatively; active listening and responsive communication; distinguishing between needs and positions; recognizing and acknowledging the other’s needs as well as your own; encouraging, supporting, and enhancing the other; taking the perspective of the other; identifying shared interests and other similarities in values, experiences, and so on; being alert to cultural differences and the possibilities of misunderstanding arising from them; controlling anger; dealing with difficult conflicts and difficult people; being sensitive to the other’s anxieties and hot buttons and how to avoid pressing them; and being aware of your own anxieties and hot buttons as well as your tendencies to be emotionally upset and misperceiving if they are pressed so that these can be controlled. A third set of skills are involved in developing a creative and productive group problem-solving and decision-making process. These include skills pertinent to group process, leadership, and effective group discussion, such as goal and standard setting; monitoring progress toward group goals; eliciting, clarifying, coordinating, summarizing, and integrating the contributions of the various participants; and maintaining group cohesion. The third set also includes such problem-solving and decision-making skills as identifying and diagnosing the nature of the problem confronting the group; acquiring the relevant information necessary for developing possible solutions; creating or identifying several possible, alternative solutions; choosing the criteria for evaluating the alternatives (such as the “effects” on economic costs and benefits, on relations between the conflicting parties, and on third parties); selecting the alternative that optimizes the results on the chosen criteria; and implementing the decision through appropriate action. People are not novices with regard to conflict. From their life experiences, many people have developed some of the component skills involved in building rapport, constructive conflict resolution, and effective group process and problem solving. However, some are not aware that they have the skills; nor are they aware of how and when to use them in a conflict. The fact that everyone has been a participant and observer in many conflicts from childhood on results in implicit knowledge, preconceptions, attitudes, and modes of behavior toward conflict that may be deeply ingrained before any systematic training occurs. Many of a person’s preexisting orientations to conflict, and modes of behavior in it, reflect those prevalent in his or her culture, but some reflect individual predispositions acquired from unique experiences in the contexts of family, school, watching TV, and the like. Before students can acquire explicit competence in conflict resolution, they have to become aware of their preexisting orientations to conflict as well as their typical behaviors. Awareness and motivation are developed by having a model of good performance that students can compare with their preconscious, preexisting one. Internalization comes from guided and repeated practice in imitating the model. Feedback on the students’ successfulness gradually shapes their behavior to be consistent with the model, and frequent practice leads to its internalization. Once the model has been internalized, recurrence of earlier incompetent orientations to

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conflict is experienced as awkward and out of place because there are internal cues to the deviations of one’s behavior from the internalized model. In tennis, if you have internalized a good model of serving, internal cues tell you if you are deviating from it (say, by throwing the ball too high). If self-taught tennis students have internalized poor serving models, training should be directed at making them aware of this and providing a good model. So too in conflict resolution. In summary, the discussion in this and the preceding sections has centered on the orientation, norms, values, and skills that help to develop a cooperative, constructive process of conflict resolution. Without competence in the skills, having a cooperative orientation and knowledge of conflict processes is often insufficient to develop a cooperative process of conflict resolution. Similarly, having the skills is insufficient to develop a cooperative process, without the cooperative orientation and motivation to apply the skills, or without the knowledge of how to apply the skills in various social and cultural contexts.

Implications for Training There are, for training, several implications of the material presented in the preceding parts of this chapter. They center on the social context of learning, the social context of applying one’s learning, the substantive content of the training, and the reflective practitioner.

The Social Context of Learning The theory described in this chapter suggests that the social context of learning be one in which cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, and creative controversy are strongly emphasized. The teaching method employed should take the form of cooperative learning, and the conflictual interactions within the classroom or workshop between teacher and students and among students should model those of creative controversy and constructive conflict resolution. The social context of learning should walk the talk, and in so doing offer students the experiences that support a cooperative orientation, exemplify the values and social norms of cooperation, and model the skills involved in constructive management of conflict.

The Social Context of Application It can be anticipated that many social contexts are unfavorable to a cooperative orientation and the use of one’s skills in constructive conflict resolution. In some social contexts, an individual who has such skills may expect to be belittled by friends or associates as being weak, unassertive, or afraid. In other contexts, she may anticipate accusations of being “disloyal,” a “traitor,” or an “enemy lover” if she tries to develop a cooperative problem-solving relationship with the other side.

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In still other contexts, the possibility of developing a constructive conflict resolution process seems so slim that one does not even try to do so. In other words, if the social context leads you to expect to be unsuccessful or devalued in employing your skills, you are not apt to use them; you will do so if it leads you to expect approval and success. The foregoing suggests that, in unfavorable social contexts, as a skilled conflict resolver you often need social support as well as two additional types of skill. One relates to the ability to place yourself outside or above your social context so that you can observe the influences emanating from it and then consciously decide whether to resist them personally or not. The other type involves the skills of a successful change agent, someone who is able to help an institution or group change its culture so that it facilitates rather than hinders constructive conflict resolution. I mention these additional skills because it is important to recognize that institutional and cultural changes are often necessary for an individual to feel free to express his or her constructive potential. The common need for social support after training has occurred has implications for who is trained and for posttraining contacts. There are several ways to foster a social context that is supportive: train all of the participants in it, train the influential people, or train a cohort of people of sufficient size to provide effective mutual support in the face of resistance. Posttraining contacts with the training institution and its trainers may also yield the social support necessary to buttress the individual in a hostile environment.

The Substantive Content of Training In prior parts of this chapter, I have outlined what I consider to be the attitudes, knowledge, and skills that amount to a framework for education in constructive conflict resolution. A skillful trainer fleshes out such a framework with substantive content that is sufficiently vital and intellectually compelling to engage the interest and motivation of the student, is relevant to his or her most common and most difficult conflicts, and is sufficiently diverse in content and social context to facilitate generalizing and applying the training in a variety of situations. To accomplish these objectives, a trainer must not only have a clear framework for training but must also be open and creative so that he or she can respond to the students’ needs effectively.

The Reflective Practitioner One of the important goals of education in this area is to help the student, as well as the trainer, become a reflective practitioner of constructive conflict resolution. I refer to two kinds of reflection: on managing the conflicts that you are experiencing, and on the framework of conflict resolution that you are employing. Self-reflection about how you are handling conflicts is necessary to continuing improvement and also to prevent old habits, your hot spots, social pressure, and the like from making you regress to less constructive modes of conflict resolution.

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Conflict resolution as a field of study is relatively young; it is going through a period of rapid intellectual development. It is experiencing an upsurge in research, theoretical development, and practical experience that, we hope, result in improvement of the frameworks that are used for training in conflict resolution. The reflective practitioner, by reflecting on his or her practice, can learn from as well as contribute to this growing body of knowledge and reflected-on experience.

Conclusion The central theme of this chapter is that a knowledgeable, skillful, cooperative approach to conflict enormously facilitates its constructive resolution. It is well to realize, however, that there is a two-way relation between effective cooperation and constructive conflict resolution. Good cooperative relations facilitate constructive management of conflict; the ability to handle constructively the inevitable conflicts that occur during cooperation facilitates the survival and deepening of cooperative relations.

References Deutsch, M. (1949a). An experimental study of the effects of cooperation and competition upon group processes. Human Relations, 2, 199–231. Deutsch, M. (1949b). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129–151. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2003). Social interdependence: The interrelationships among theory, research, and practice. The Center for Cooperative Learning, The University of Minnesota. Rawls, J. (1996). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.

Recommended Reading Deutsch, M. (1973) The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction. Rawls, J. (1996). Political liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Rubin, J. Z., Pruitt, D. G., & Kim, S. H. (1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

Chapter 3

Intellectual Legacy: Cooperation and Competition David W. Johnson and Roger T. Johnson

Introduction When Morton Deutsch published the basic theory of cooperation and competition in 1949 there was considerable conceptual confusion concerning the nature of these phenomena. There were a variety of existing definitions of these concepts that were markedly different and sometimes contradictory. Theories dealing with cooperation had been proposed by such social scientists as Piaget and Mead and cooperation was a central concept in such diverse fields as economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The research was sparse, and the studies that had been done had little agreement about either the conceptual or the operational definitions of cooperation and competition. There were few systematic implementations of cooperation in applied situations. Deutsch’s theory changed everything. In this chapter the nature of social interdependence theory will be briefly reviewed. The importance of the theory will then be detailed. It should be noted at the beginning, however, that social interdependence theory represents a classic example of the ideal relationship among theory, research, and practice (Johnson, 2003). Ideally, theory guides and summarizes research, research validates or disconfirms theory (thereby leading to its refinement and modification), and effective practice is guided by validated theory yet reveals inadequacies that lead to further refinement of the theory and new research studies that result in refined practical procedures.

Social Interdependence Theory While Kurt Lewin (1935) suggested that mutual goals created an interdependence among group members, Morton Deutsch (1949a, 1962) extended Lewin’s notion by positing that the tension systems of different people arising from their goals may D.W. Johnson (B) Cooperative Learning Center, University of Minnesota, Minnesota, MN, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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be either positively or negatively interrelated. Positive interdependence exists when there is a positive correlation among individuals’ goal attainments; individuals perceive that they can attain their goals if and only if the other individuals with whom they are cooperatively linked attain their goals. Negative interdependence exists when there is a negative correlation among individuals’ goal achievements; individuals perceive that they can obtain their goals if and only if the other individuals with whom they are competitively linked fail to obtain their goals. No interdependence exists when there is no correlation among individuals’ goal achievements; individuals perceive that the achievement of their goals is unrelated to the goal achievement of others. Interdependence results in three psychological processes (Deutsch, 1949a): substitutability (i.e., the degree to which actions of one person substitute for the actions of another person), cathexis (i.e., the investment of psychological energy in objects outside of oneself, such as friends, family, and work), and inducibility (i.e., the openness to being influenced and to influencing others). Positive interdependence results in promotive interaction (i.e., individuals encouraging and facilitating each other’s efforts to complete tasks in order to reach the group’s goals) while negative interdependence results in oppositional or contrient interaction (i.e., individuals discouraging and obstructing each other’s efforts to complete tasks in order to reach their goals). No interdependence results in isolation and neither promotive or contrient interaction occurs. The basic premise of social interdependence theory is that how participants’ goals are structured determines how they interact and the interaction pattern determines the outcomes of the situation (Deutsch, 1949a, 1962). In this premise, cause and effect can go both ways. Deutsch’s (1985) crude law of social relations states that the characteristic processes and effects elicited by a given type of social interdependence also tends to elicit that type of social interdependence. Thus, cooperation tends to induce and be induced by mutual assistance, exchange of needed resources, and trust. Competition tends to induce and be induced by obstruction of each other’s success, tactics of coercion and threat, enhancement of power differences, deceptive communication, and striving to “win” conflicts. Individualistic efforts tend to induce and be induced by an avoidance of other people. Each process tends to be selfconfirming. Any part of the social interdependence process elicits the other parts of the process. Since each component can induce the others, they are likely to be found together.

Importance of Social Interdependence Theory There is a long list of reasons why social interdependence theory is an important contribution to psychology and science in general. First, it is well-formulated. It summarizes complex observations in abstract, logically-related propositions that explain causal relationships. One example (of deceiving simplicity), is positive goal interdependence leads to promotive interaction that results in higher achievement.

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Second, the theory focuses on dynamic (not static) states. When individuals engage in cooperative or competitive efforts, each action they take affects the level of cooperation or competition present in the situation. The level of cooperation occurring in a group, for example, is a quasi-stationary equilibrium (Lewin, 1935), a balance between the forces for increased cooperation and the forces for less cooperation. With each action a member takes, the balance shifts, and the level of cooperation changes. Supporting a member’s efforts tends to move the equilibrium point towards increased cooperation, while refusing to help a struggling group member tends to move the equilibrium point towards decreased cooperation. The level of cooperation among group members is in a constant state of flux, as each member’s actions promotes or hinders the movement of the group toward goal achievement. Third, social interdependence theory focuses on relationship, not individual variables. Most psychological theories have focused on individual variables, attempting to understand the laws that govern the behavior of a single individual. They assumed that the causes of an individual’s behavior were inside the individual, that is, the causes of behavior are personality traits, attitudes, values, skills, aptitudes, brain chemistry, and genes. In contrast, social interdependence theory focuses on relationship variables that reside between or among parties. Cooperation and competition are relationship variables, as they involve interaction between at least two parties and the examination of how the actions of one affect the actions of others. The goal of the researcher is to identify the causal conditions creating the oscillating pattern of the interactions, which originate primarily from the situation and the social context. It is typically more difficult to theorize about relationship variables than individual variables. Deutsch’s work on social interdependence represents one of the finest examples of theorizing about relationship variables and is a model for other social psychologists to follow. As Lewin (1935) emphasized the importance of studying relationship variables, Deutsch is one of the few social psychologists who have remained firmly in the Lewinian tradition. Fourth, social interdependence theory is a multi-level theory, applying to intrapersonal (i.e., elements within an individual may cooperate or compete with each other), interpersonal, intergroup, and international dynamics. Thus, the theory is relevant to many levels of human life, being as relevant to world peace as it is to group effectiveness. Fifth, social interdependence theory is a middle-range theory. In the 1930s and 1940s there was an attempt to build mega-theories that explained all or much of human behavior, such as Lewin’s (1935) field theory, Tolman’s (1932) purposeful theory of motivation and learning, Hull’s (1935) drive reduction theory, and many others. Since the 1950s there has been a trend in social psychology for researchers to formulate micro theories that explain a single phenomenon, usually explaining causation with individual variables. Dissonance theory (Festinger, 1957), attribution theory (Heider, 1958), and reactance theory (Brehm, 1966) are examples. Social interdependence theory is a middle-range theory. It deals with a broad range of phenomena (as reflected in the number of dependent variables studied), serves as a foundation for other theories, and subsumes many of the micro-theories into a unifying framework (see Johnson & Johnson, 2005). Positive interdependence,

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for example, may subsume group reinforcement, entitativity (the perception that a group is a unified and coherent whole in which the members are bonded together, see Campbell, 1958), role theory, divisions of labor, individual accountability (i.e., responsibility forces), and many other phenomena. Most importantly, social interdependence theory is cumulative, conceptually clear, profound, strategic, powerful, serves as a foundation for other theories, and is verifiable. Each of these will be discussed in detail.

Historical Roots: The Cumulative Nature of the Theory Like General MacArthur, most psychological theories never die but slowly fade away (as people lose interest) without either (a) being built into the larger edifice of well-tested human knowledge or (b) being destroyed by recalcitrant facts and abandoned, perhaps regrettably, as a “nice try” (Johnson, 2003). The strength of a theory is reflected in the extent to which it builds on a cumulative past. A theory is supposed to build on past theories so that it corrects, extends, and refines the older theories. This is how knowledge advances. Most psychological theories are “soft” in the sense that they lack the cumulative character of scientific knowledge. They tend to be neither corroborated or refuted. Deutsch’s theory is an exception. Deutsch’s theory is clearly cumulative (Johnson, 2003). The historical roots of social interdependence theory can be traced to a shift from mechanistic to field theories in physics (Deutsch, 1968). This shift especially influenced the emerging school of Gestalt Psychology at the University of Berlin in the early 1900s. As the “field” became the unit of analysis in physics, so did the “whole” or “gestalt” become the focus of the study of perception and behavior for Gestalt psychologists. Gestalt psychologists posited that humans are primarily concerned with developing organized and meaningful views of their world by perceiving events as integrated wholes rather than a summation of parts or properties. One of the founders of the Gestalt School of Psychology, Kurt Koffka (1935), proposed that similar to psychological fields, groups were dynamic wholes in which the interdependence among members’ goals could vary. Building on the principles of Gestalt Psychology, Kurt Lewin (1935) proposed that the essence of a group is the interdependence among members which results in the group being a “dynamic whole” so that a change in the state of any member or subgroup changes the state of any other member or subgroup. Group members are made interdependent through common goals. As members perceive their common goals, a state of tension arises that motivates movement toward the accomplishment of the goals. Morton Deutsch took Lewin’s notions and extended them into one of the most important theories in social psychology.

Conceptual Clarity of Definitions As previously mentioned in this chapter, when Morton Deutsch published the basic theory of cooperation and competition in 1949 there was considerable conceptual confusion concerning the nature of these phenomena. Deutsch brought clarity and

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insight to the nature of cooperation and competition. One of the most important characteristics of Deutsch’s theorizing is that he took complex social phenomena (cooperation and competition) and defined them in a precise way to embed them within a theory. In the 1920s and 1930s, there was some research on cooperation and competition, but it was disjointed, used a variety of definitions of cooperation and competition (even within the same study) that were ambiguous and in some cases contradictory, and provided little conceptual clarity as to the nature of cooperation or competition. At least three prior books on cooperation and competition were written by Maller (1929) (Cooperation and Competition: An Experimental Study in Motivation), Margaret Mead (1937) (Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples), and May and Doob (1937) (Competition and Cooperation). Deutsch’s (1949a) definitions utilizing positive, negative, or no interdependence among goals (a) brought considerable conceptual clarity to the nature of social interdependence, (b) helped reorganize the previous studies by creating a framework from which it was possible to classify the operational definitions in previous studies as to the actual type of social interdependence created, and (c) helped operationalize the types of social interdependence in future studies (i.e., the rules of correspondence were clear). Morton Deutsch also brought conceptual clarity to the area by formulating clear conceptual definitions with single denotations and few if any connations. In order to do so, he invented the word, “contrient” (the opposite of promotive), to describe the interaction pattern found in competitive situations.

Profound Theory An essential characteristic of a theory is whether it is profound, as opposed to trivial. A theory is profound when individuals who know the theory understand more about the real world than do people who do not know the theory. The scientist must have better theories than the layman, or he or she is not really a scientist at all. A scientist who after careful study and measurement concludes that most humans have two legs may not be a scientist, because his or her conclusions are trivial. Everyone knew the result before the investigation began. An empirical, theoretically connected body of knowledge is scientific only when it is profound. There can be little doubt that a person who understands social interdependence theory can manage cooperative and competitive situations more effectively than individuals who do not understand the theory. Perhaps the clearest example is in education. It is in education that the most systematic and widespread applications of social interdependence theory have taken place, mainly through the implementation of cooperative learning. Cooperative learning is the instructional use of small groups so that students work together to maximize their own and each other’s learning (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). There are four types of cooperative learning: formal cooperative learning, informal cooperative learning, cooperative base groups, and constructive controversy. Formal cooperative learning consists of students working together, for one class period to several weeks, to achieve shared learning goals and complete jointly specific tasks and assignments (such as problem-solving, completing a curriculum unit, writing a report, conducting an experiment, or having a dialogue about assigned

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text material) (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). Any course requirement or assignment may be structured to be cooperative. In formal cooperative learning teachers: 1. Make a number of preinstructional decisions. A teacher has to decide on the objectives of the lesson (both academic and social skills objectives), size of groups, the method of assigning students to groups, the roles students will be assigned, the materials needed to conduct the lesson, and the way the room will be arranged. 2. Explain the task and the positive interdependence. A teacher clearly defines the assignment, teaches the required concepts and strategies, specifies the positive interdependence and individual accountability, gives the criteria for success, and explains the expected social skills to be engaged in. 3. Monitor students’ learning and intervene within the groups to provide task assistance or to increase students’ interpersonal and group skills. A teacher systematically observes and collects data on each group as it works. When it is needed, the teacher intervenes to assist students in completing the task accurately and in working together effectively. 4. Evaluate students’ learning and help students process how well their groups functioned. Students’ learning is carefully assessed and their performances are evaluated. Members of the learning groups then process how effectively they have been working together. Informal cooperative learning consists of having students work together to achieve a joint learning goal in temporary, ad-hoc groups that last from a few minutes to one class period (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). Students engage in quick dialogues or activities in temporary, ad-hoc groups in response to a limited number of questions about what is being learned. The brief dialogues or activities may be used to focus student attention on the material to be learned, set a mood conducive to learning, help set expectations as to what will be covered in a class session, ensure that students cognitively process the material being taught, and provide closure to an instructional session. Informal cooperative learning groups are often organized so that students engage in three- to five-minute focused discussions before and after a lecture and two- to three-minute turn-to-your-partner discussions interspersed every ten to fifteen minutes throughout a lecture. Cooperative base groups are long-term, heterogeneous cooperative learning groups with stable membership whose primary responsibilities are to provide support, encouragement, and assistance to make academic progress and develop cognitively and socially in healthy ways as well as holding each other accountable for striving to learn (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). Typically, cooperative base groups (a) are heterogeneous in membership, (b) meet regularly (for example, daily or biweekly), and (c) last for the duration of the semester, year, or until all members are graduated. Students are assigned to base groups of three to four members, meet at the beginning and end of each class session (or week) to complete academic tasks such as checking each members’ homework, routine tasks such as

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taking attendance, and personal support tasks such as listening sympathetically to personal problems or providing guidance for writing a paper. These three types of cooperative learning may be used together. A typical class session may begin with a base group meeting, which is followed by a short lecture in which informal cooperative learning is used. The lecture is followed by a formal cooperative learning lesson. Near the end of the class session another short lecture may be delivered with the use of informal cooperative learning. The class ends with a base group meeting. At the school level, faculty and staff can meet weekly in teaching teams and/or study groups, engage in school-based decision making, and structure faculty meetings and school events cooperatively (Johnson & Johnson, 1994). Social interdependence theory is an example of how a good theory can change the course of everyday life. The research on the implementation of cooperative learning clearly shows that a teacher who understands the nature of social interdependence can structure and use cooperative learning more effectively than do teachers who do not know the theory (Johnson & Johnson, 1989). From being relatively unknown and unused in the 1960s, cooperative learning is now utilized in schools and universities throughout most of the world in every subject area and from preschool through graduate school and adult training programs. Its use so pervades education that it is difficult to find a textbook on instructional methods, a teacher’s journal, or instructional materials that do not discuss cooperative learning. The widespread use of cooperative learning throughout the world indicates that it may be successfully implemented in a wide variety of conditions and academic levels. It is one of psychology’s success stories. In other words, there is considerable evidence that social interdependence theory is profound.

Strategic Theory Another essential characteristic of a theory is whether it is strategic or narrow. A theory is strategic when it has implications for and applications to a wide range of problems and situations. Cooperation and competition are so central to human life that there is almost no aspect of human behavior to which the theory does not apply. Social interdependence theory has been used as a guide to build concrete practical procedures in education (Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008), business (Tjosvold, 1989), individual and group psychotherapy (Johnson & Matross, 1977), family therapy (Johnson, 1983), mediation (Kessel, 2000), organizational and community development (Johnson & Johnson, 1994), international conflict and peace-building (Deutsch, 1983; Johnson & Johnson, 2010a), being a citizen in a democracy (Johnson & Johnson, 2010b), and many other areas. It has been used as a guide to provide procedures to solve social problems such as desegregation, inclusion of handicapped students in the regular classroom, the prevention of drug abuse, and the raising of low self-esteem of at-risk pupils. There are so many applications of social interdependence theory that they cannot be all listed here. Another indicator of strategicness is the number and variety of the dependent variables studied in the research. Social interdependence is a generic human

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phenomenon that effects many different outcomes simultaneously. A wide variety of dependent variables have been examined in the research on social interdependence. While the dependent variables are often classified into three major areas (effort to achieve, interpersonal relations, psychological health), there are so many different dependent variables that have been demonstrated to be affected by social interdependence that it is one of the most strategic theories in the social sciences. Related to effort to achieve, for example, there have been studies on individual achievement and retention, group and organizational productivity, higher-level reasoning, moral reasoning, transfer of training and learning, job satisfaction, learning strategies, achievement motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, continuing motivation, time on task, and many other variables. Related to interpersonal relations, numerous measures of interpersonal attraction have been used, along with measures of group cohesion, interpersonal affection and love, liking among diverse individuals (ethnicity, culture, handicapping conditions, and so forth), attitudes toward diversity, and prejudice. In addition, there is considerable research on academic support and personal social support. Related to psychological health, measures have been used for psychological adjustment; cognitive, social, psychological development; social competencies; self-esteem; personal causation and locus of control; attributions concerning success and failure; self-efficacy; shared identity; internalization of values; and coping with stress. There are few if any theories in social psychology that is more strategic than social interdependence theory.

Powerful Theory A theory is powerful when it has considerable internal and external validity and generalizes across a wide range of individual differences, situational variables, cultures, and historical periods. Many of the over 1,500 research studies that have been conducted on social interdependence have high internal validity, being carefully conducted by skilled investigators under highly controlled, laboratory conditions. In 43.5 percent of the studies, participants were randomly assigned to conditions and in 18.8 percent, groups were randomly assigned to conditions. Seventy-seven percent of the studies were published in journals. Thirty-one percent of the studies were conducted in research laboratories. When rated on the variables of random assignment to conditions, clarity of control conditions, control of the experimenter effect, control of the curriculum effect (same materials used in all conditions), and verification of the successful implementation of the independent variable, 51 percent of the studies met these criteria. The more variations in places, people, and procedures the research can withstand and still yield the same findings, the more externally valid the conclusions. The research on social interdependence has an external validity and a generalizability rarely found in the social sciences. The research has been conducted in twelve different historical decades. While the first studies were conducted in the 1890s or before, at least eight studies were conducted before 1930, 6 were conducted in the 1930s, 5 were conducted in the 1940s, and 25 were conducted in the 1950s. In the

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1960s, 80 studies were conducted; 183 were conducted in the 1970s; 285 were conducted in the 1980s, and many, many more have been conducted since. Over these 12 decades, many different researchers have conducted the research with markedly different theoretical and practical orientations working in different settings. A wide variety of research tasks, ways of structuring social interdependence, and measures of the dependent variables have been used. Participants in the studies ranged from ages 3 to post-college adults. Twelve percent of the studies were conducted with participants under the age of 10; 24 percent of participants were from 10 to 12; 14 percent of the participants were from ages 13 to 15; 7 percent were ages 15 to 18; 37 percent were from 19 to 22; and 5 percent were non-students age 23 or older. The research participants have varied not only as to age and gender, but also as to economic class, ethnicity, language, and culture. The studies were conducted with different durations. Twenty-eight-percent of the studies lasted only for one session, 40 percent lasted for 2 to 29 sessions, and 32 percent lasted for 30 sessions or more. Seventy-four percent of the studies involved mixed-gender groups. The diversity of these studies gives social interdependence theory wide generalizability and considerable external validity. Research on social interdependence has been conducted in numerous countries and cultures. In North America (United States, Canada, Mexico), for example, research has been conducted with Caucasian, Black American, Native American, and Hispanic participant populations. In addition, cooperation has been researched in Asia (e.g., Japan, Hong Kong, China, South Korea, India), Southeast Asia (e.g., Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand), the Middle East (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Turkey), Africa (e.g., Nigeria, South Africa), Europe (e.g., Greece, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, England, Ireland, Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic), and many other countries. Essentially, the findings have been consistent. The robustness of the research in a wide variety of cultures adds to the validity and generalizability of the theory. Finally, research on cooperation and competition has been conducted in numerous disciplines. Most of the research has been conducted in psychology (Deutsch, 1949b, 1962; Johnson, 1970; Johnson & Johnson, 1974, 1989, 2005; May & Doob, 1937; Triplett, 1898). Yet research has been conducted in anthropology (Mead, 1937; Madsen, 1967; Montague, 1966) and sociology (Coleman, 1961; Michaels, 1977). Social interdependence is central to economics (Smith, 1759; Von Mises, 1949), ethnology (Lorenz, 1963), political science, and most of the other social sciences.

Foundation for Other Theories While competing theories have been proposed by such social scientists as Piaget (1950), Skinner (1968), and Mead (1937) and in such diverse fields as economics, evolution, sociology, anthropology, and psychology, Deutsch’s theory of social interdependence has been the foundation on which a number of other theories have

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been built. Those theories deal with such phenomena as trust, conflict, integrative negotiations, social justice, positive power, and values. Trust is based on the belief that the other person will behave in a cooperative, not a competitive manner (Deutsch, 1962). Conflict resolution is based on restoring cooperation among disputants and reducing competitive behavior (Deutsch, 1973). Integrative negotiations are grounded in promoting a cooperative problem-solving (as opposed to a competitive) process of coming to an agreement (Johnson & F. Johnson, 2009; Johnson & R. Johnson, 2003). Distributive (social) justice may be based on equality (cooperative rationale), equity (competitive rationale), or a need basis (altruistic rationale) (Deutsch, 1985). Newly conceptualized views of positive power are based on the view that power is positive when it enhances the cooperative aspects of the situation and reduces the competitive aspects of the situation (Coleman & Tjosvold, 2000; Johnson & F. Johnson, 2009). Cooperation is the basis for social identity theory and procedural justice (Tyler & Blader, 2000). Recent discussions of inculcating values detail how cooperation tends to promote prosocial values while competition tends to promote more self-centered values (Deutsch, 2006; Johnson & Johnson, 1996b, 1999b, 2000). Without social interdependence theory these theories would not be as well formulated or as meaningful. Furthermore, the greater the validation for social interdependence theory, the greater the validation for these and other related theories. Dealing with many of the same dynamics as social interdependence theory is goal theory (Covington, 2000), which divides goals into mastery or learning goals (i.e., striving to develop competence) and performance goals (i.e., striving to demonstrate competence relative to others). Mastery goals may be structured either cooperatively or individualistically, while performance goals are clearly competitive. Findings concerning performance goals may be subsumed under social interdependence theory, but many of the findings concerning mastery goals are ambiguous, as they may apply to cooperative or individualistic situations.

Testable Theory That Generates Research Social interdependence theory has a long history and has been carefully formulated to explain cooperative and competitive relations among individuals. Theory, however, tends to be of limited value unless it adequately subsumes the existing research into a meaningful conceptual framework and generates further research that validates or disconfirms the theory and establishes the conditions under which the hypothesized relationships occur. Social interdependence theory has done both. The relationship between theory and research, however, is not one way (Merton, 1957). Empirical research can shape the development of theory through the discovery of valid results that were not anticipated, the accumulation of research findings that the theory does not adequately explain, the clarification of the nature of theoretical concepts, and the demonstration of the relationship between the theory and new dependent variables.

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Hundreds of research studies have followed from Deutsch’s landmark dissertation, in which he demonstrated that (a) the complex social phenomena of cooperation and competition could be studied experimentally and (b) social interdependence theory was formulated in a way that was testable. There are theories, for example, that seem quite profound and useful (e.g., Freud’s theory of psychodynamics), but the research methodology does not exist to test their basic propositions (e.g., Oedipal Complex). While the study of social interdependence is commonly recognized as the oldest field of research in American social psychology (i.e., in 1898 Triplett published a study on the factors associated with competitive performance), by demonstrating that the methodology existed to study cooperation and competition experimentally, Deutsch’s dissertation set the stage for an explosion of research on social interdependence in the subsequent decades. Over 1,500 studies have been conducted on the relative merits of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts and the conditions under which each is appropriate. Over 1,200 of these studies have enough data included that it is possible to compute an effect size. This is one of the largest bodies of research within the social sciences and it provides sufficient empirical research to test social interdependence theory’s propositions. In addition, if research is to have impact on theory and practice, it must be summarized and communicated in a complete, objective, impartial, and unbiased way. In an age of information explosion, there is considerable danger that theories will be formulated on small and nonrepresentative samples of available knowledge, thereby resulting in fallacious conclusions that in turn lead to mistaken practices. A quantitative reviewing procedure allows for more definitive and robust conclusions. Some of the most sophisticated reviews of psychological research, many pioneering the use of meta-analysis, have used social interdependence theory as their organizing framework (Johnson, 1970; Johnson & Johnson, 1974, 1978, 1989, 2005; Johnson, Johnson, Maruyama, Nelson, & Skon, 1981; Johnson, Johnson, & Maruyama, 1983; Qin, Johnson, & Johnson, 1995; Stanne, Johnson, & Johnson, 1999; Roseth, Johnson, & Johnson, 2008). Deutsch’s theory, therefore, has served as a major conceptual structure for inquiry into cooperation and competition for the past 60 years.

Research on Social Interdependence The research on social interdependence is notable for the sheer amount of work done, the long history of the work, the wide variety of dependent variables examined, the generalizability and validity of the work, and the sophistication of the research reviews. In terms of sheer quantity of research, social interdependence theory is one of the most examined aspects of human nature. The many diverse dependent variables examined in studies on social interdependence over the past 110 years may be subsumed within three broad categories (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2003a, 2005): effort to achieve, positive interpersonal relationships, and psychological health (see Fig. 3.1 and Table 3.1).

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Fig. 3.1 Outcomes of cooperative learning Source: Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Reprinted with permission

A meta-analysis of all relevant studies found that the average person cooperating performed at about 2/3 a standard deviation above the average person performing within a competitive (effect size = 0.67) or individualistic situation (effect size = 0.64). When only studies with high internal validity were included in the analysis, the effect sizes were 0.88 and 0.61, respectively. Cooperative experiences promoted more frequent insight into and use of higher-level cognitive and moral reasoning strategies than did competitive (effect size = 0.93) or individualistic efforts (effect size = 0.97). Cooperators tended to spend more time on task than did competitors (effect size = 0.76) or participants working individualistically (effect size = 1.17). Competitors tended to spend more time on task than did participants working individualistically (effect size = 0.64).

Positive Relationships and Social Support Since 1940, over 180 studies have compared the impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts on interpersonal attraction. Cooperative efforts, compared with competitive (effect size = 0.67) and individualistic (effect size = 0.60)

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Table 3.1 Mean effect sizes for impact of social interdependence on dependent variables Dependent Variable

Cooperative vs. competitive

Cooperative vs. individualistic

Competitive vs. individualistic

Achievement Interpersonal attraction Social support Self-esteem Time on task Attitudes toward task Quality of reasoning Perspective-taking

0.67 0.67 0.62 0.58 0.76 0.57 0.93 0.61

0.64 0.60 0.70 0.44 1.17 0.42 0.97 0.44

0.30 0.08 −0.13 −0.23 0.64 0.15 0.13 −0.13

High quality studies Achievement Interpersonal attraction Social support Self-esteem

0.88 0.82 0.83 0.67

0.61 0.62 0.72 0.45

0.07 0.27 −0.13 −0.25

0.45

0.13

0.74

0.61

Pure operationalizations Mixed operationalizations: achievement Pure operationalizations: achievement

Source: Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Reprinted with permission. Effort To Achieve

experiences, promoted considerable more liking among individuals. This remains true when only the methodologically high quality studies are examined (effect sizes = 0.82 and 0.62 respectively) and when the studies focusing on relationships between white and minority participants (effect sizes = 0.52 and 0.44 respectively) and relationships between nonhandicapped and handicapped participants (effect sizes = 0.70 and 0.64 respectively) are examined. These results validate social judgment theory (Johnson & Johnson, 1989), an extension of social interdependence theory. The social judgments individuals make about each other result in either a process of acceptance resulting in mutual liking and respect or a process of rejection resulting in mutual dislike and lack of respect. Since the 1940s, furthermore, over 106 studies comparing the relative impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts on social support have been conducted. Cooperative experiences promoted greater task-oriented and personal social support than did competitive (effect size = 0.62) or individualistic (effect size = 0.70) experiences. This was still true when only the methodologically high quality studies are examined (effect sizes = 0.83 and 0.72 respectively).

Psychological Health and Self-Esteem Seven studies directly measured the relationship between social interdependence and psychological health (see Johnson & Johnson, 1989). The samples studied included university individuals, older adults, suburban high-school seniors, juvenile

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and adult prisoners, step-couples, and Olympic hockey players. The results indicate that working cooperatively with peers and valuing cooperation result in greater psychological health than does competing with peers or working independently. Cooperative attitudes were highly correlated with a wide variety of indices of psychological health, competitiveness was in some cases positively and in some cases negatively related to psychological health, and individualistic attitudes were negatively related to a wide variety of indices of psychological health. One aspect of psychological health is self-esteem, and since the 1950s, there have been over 80 studies comparing the relative impact of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic experiences on self-esteem. Cooperative experiences promote higher self-esteem than do competitive (effect size = 0.58) or individualistic (effect size = 0.44) experiences, even when only the methodologically high quality studies are examined (effect sizes = 0.67 and 0.45 respectively). Norem-Hebeisen and Johnson (1981) conducted four studies involving 821 white, middle-class, highschool seniors in a midwestern suburban community. They found that cooperative experiences tend to be related to beliefs that one is intrinsically worthwhile, others see one in positive ways, one’s attributes compare favorably with those of one’s peers, and one is a capable, competent, and successful person. Competitive experiences tend to be related to conditional self-esteem based on whether one wins or loses. Individualistic experiences tend to be related to basic self-rejection.

Essential Elements of Cooperation Applications of social interdependence theory are required to operationalize either positive or negative interdependence in order to create promotive or oppositional interaction that will lead to the desired outcomes. Operationalizations of positive interdependence have focused both on the relative efficacy of the ways that it may be structured and on increasing the responsibility forces through individual accountability procedures. Operationalizations of promotive interaction have included an emphasis on social skills and group processing. While the basic theoretical premise focuses on three variables (interdependence, interaction, outcomes), the operationalizations of the positive interdependence and promotive interaction have resulted in five variables being emphasized (interdependence, individual accountability, interaction pattern, social skills, and group processing) (Johnson, 2003; Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005).

Positive Interdependence In the studies on positive outcome interdependence, positive interdependence may be confounded with perception of group membership or interpersonal interaction. The evidence indicates, however, that neither group membership nor interpersonal interaction in and of themselves seem sufficient to produce higher achievement

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and productivity–positive goal interdependence is also required (Johnson, & Johnson, 1989, 2005). Knowing that one’s performance affects the success of groupmates seems to create “responsibility forces” that increase one’s efforts to achieve. A series of studies conducted on the relative efficacy of types of positive interdependence found that positive goal and reward interdependence tend to be additive; while positive goal interdependence is sufficient to produce higher achievement and productivity than do individualistic efforts, the combination of goal and reward interdependence tends to increase achievement more than goal interdependence alone (Johnson, & Johnson, 1989, 2005). Positive goal interdependence tends to promote higher achievement and greater productivity than does resource interdependence. Resource interdependence by itself may decrease achievement and productivity compared with individualistic efforts (when individuals need the resources of other group members but do not share common goals, they try to obtain resources from others without sharing their own resources with them). Both working to achieve a reward and working to avoid the loss of a reward produced higher achievement than did individualistic efforts. There is evidence that positive interdependence tends to motivate individuals to try harder, use higher level reasoning strategies more frequently, and develop new insights and discoveries more frequently. The more complex the procedures involved in interdependence, however, the longer it will take group members to reach their full levels of productivity. Finally, identity interdependence (i.e., defining oneself in terms of group membership), results in being more willing to take less from common resources and to contribute more toward the common good.

Individual Accountability and Personal Responsibility Positive interdependence is posited to create “responsibility forces” that increase group members’ feelings of responsibility and accountability for (a) completing one’s share of the work and (b) facilitating the work of other group members. When a person’s performance affects the outcomes of collaborators, the person feels responsible for their welfare as well as his or her own (Matsui, Kakuyama, & Onglatco, 1987). Failing oneself is bad, but failing others as well is worse. The shared responsibility created by positive interdependence adds the concept of “ought” to group members’ motivation—one ought to do one’s part, pull one’s weight, contribute, and satisfy peer norms (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005). Such feelings of responsibility increase a person’s motivation to perform well. Responsibility forces are increased when there is group and individual accountability. Hooper, Ward, Hannafin and Clark (1989) found that cooperation resulted in higher achievement when individual accountability was structured than when it was not. Archer-Kath, Johnson, and Johnson (1994) found that increasing individual accountability resulted in increases in perceived interdependence among group members.

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Promotive Interaction Positive interdependence is posited to result in promotive interaction and negative interdependence is posited to result in oppositional or contrient interaction. Promotive interaction is characterized by individuals engaging in such actions as providing each other with efficient and effective help and assistance and exchanging needed resources such as information and materials. Negative interdependence typically results in individuals opposing each other’s success. Oppositional interaction occurs as individuals discourage and obstruct each other’s efforts to achieve their goals; individuals focus both on being productive and on preventing any other person from being more productive than they are. No interaction occurs when individuals work independently without any interchange with each other; individuals focus only on being productive and ignore as irrelevant the efforts of others. Promotive interaction requires the appropriate use of interpersonal and small group skills and regular group processing.

Appropriate Use of Social Skills Promoting the success of other group members requires participants to have (or be taught) the interpersonal and small group skills needed for high quality cooperation, and be motivated to use them (Johnson, 2003; Johnson & F. Johnson, 2009). In studies on the long-term implementation of cooperative efforts the combination of positive goal interdependence, a contingency for high performance by all group members, and a social skills contingency, promoted the highest achievement and productivity. Giving participants individual feedback on how frequently they engaged in targeted social skills was more effective in increasing participants’ achievement and creating more positive relationships than was group feedback.

Group Processing Promotive interaction may be enhanced by group members periodically reflecting on how well they are functioning and how they may improve their work processes. Within cooperative groups, group processing (compared with cooperation without group processing and individualistic efforts) has been found to increase the achievement of high-, medium-, and low-achieving students, problem-solving success, achievement motivation, uniformity of achievement among group members, and attempts to influence groupmates toward higher achievement (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005). It also results in more positive relationships between handicapped and nonhandicapped participants (and that these positive relationships carried over to post-instructional free-time situations), greater self-esteem, and more positive attitudes toward the subject area.

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Conditions for Constructive Competition and Individualistic Efforts Social interdependence theory has been expanded in the past few decades to include the conditions under which competition may be constructive (Johnson & Johnson, 1974, 1978, 1989, 1999; Stanne, Johnson, & Johnson, 1999; Tjosvold, Johnson, Johnson, & Sun, 2003). Competition tends to be more constructive when winning is relatively unimportant, all participants have a reasonable chance to win, and there are clear, specific, and fair rules, procedures, and criteria for winning. Individualistic efforts may be most appropriate when cooperation is too costly, the goal is perceived to be important, participants expect to be successful, the task is unitary and nondivisible, directions for completing the task are simple and clear, and what is accomplished will be used subsequently in a cooperative effort.

Applications to Practice Applying a theory to practice often (a) leads to the discovery of new issues for the theory to consider and (b) highlights issues and areas that are neglected within the theory. These in turn lead to modification and refinement of the theory, which in turn leads to new research, and finally to the modification and refinement of applied procedures. The application of theory to practice completes the cycle from theory to research to application to revised theory, new research, and revised practice. Social interdependence theory has not only benefited from extensive research, it has benefited from applications in such diverse fields as education, business and industry, law, political science, economics, architecture, social work, medicine, sports and games, and psychotherapy. There is considerable evidence that cooperative efforts tend to promote greater effort to achieve, more positive relationships, and greater psychological health than do competitive or individualistic efforts and that the power of cooperation depends on the presence of clear positive interdependence (which includes individual accountability) that results in promotive interaction (which includes appropriate use of social skills and group processing). These results provide strong confirmation of social interdependence theory as the validating research has considerable diversity and generalizability. Having a validated theory, however, does not mean that it will direct or even influence practice for at least two reasons. First, validated theories can be ignored. There are many validated theories that no one ever attempted to apply to practical situations. There are validated theories from which applied procedures have been derived, and the procedures have been demonstrated to work, and then no one advocates or implements the procedures. There must be advocates for a validated theory who (a) derive procedures for practitioners to use, (b) train practitioners in how to use the procedures effectively, (c) assist practitioners in implementing the procedures, and (d) assess the effectiveness of the procedures (Bjork, Dansereau, Druckman, et c., 1994; Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Johnson,

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Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). From implementing the procedures, the strengths and weaknesses of the theory are revealed, possible revisions of the theory are illuminated, and a new research agenda is formulated. Second, effective practices can be derived from sound theories, but they can also be derived from unsound theories or from no theory at all (i.e., through trial and error or luck). Effective practice can be derived from validated theory only if the theory is stated with sufficient precision that effective procedures can be deduced for practitioners to use. Social interdependence theory has such precision. Once practical procedures are deduced, they must be implemented in a wide range of settings and evaluated. A number of conditions, such as inertia, resistance to change, economic conditions, prejudice, and cultural resistance, can result in effective practices not being implemented or institutionalized. At the University of Minnesota, the Cooperative Learning Center has worked with school districts and universities throughout the world in implementing cooperative learning. Such widespread and diverse use of cooperative learning has resulted in modifications and extensions of social interdependence theory and numerous new research studies. Small group learning has been used since the beginning of human existence (Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). While versions of cooperative learning were promoted in the United States during the late 1800s by Frances Parker (Campbell, 1965) and in the first half of the 20th Century by John Dewey (1970), its use faded away in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, partly due to the lack of an underlying theory and validating research. The modern use of cooperative learning primarily began in 1966 with the training of teachers at the University of Minnesota in the effective instructional use of small groups. What made this implementation different was its use of social interdependence theory as a basis for (a) instructional procedures and (b) research on cooperative learning’s effectiveness. By tying the cooperative learning procedures closely to social interdependence theory (thereby giving them a conceptual structure and making them more specific and systematic than previous versions of cooperative learning) and conducting research that simultaneously tested social interdependence theory and demonstrated cooperative learning effectiveness, cooperative learning has become far more institutionalized into pedagogy than most instructional methods. Since the mid-1960s, this application of social interdependence theory to education has become one of the most successful and widespread applications of psychology to practice. Practical procedures have been created from social interdependence theory for structuring cooperative, competitive, and individualistic efforts at both the classroom and the school levels (Johnson & Johnson, 1994; Johnson, Johnson, & Holubec, 2008). The widespread implementation of cooperative learning by countless teachers and professors throughout the world has resulted in several contributions to social interdependence theory. Some of the more important are as follows. 1. Operationalizing cooperative learning by so many different teachers, in so many different subject areas and settings, in preschool through adult education, with so many varied tasks and students, and in so many different countries and cultures, validates the theory and the clarity of the conceptual definitions. The

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correspondence between Deutsch’s (1949a) theoretical definitions and the practical procedures highlights a major strength of social interdependence theory. It is noteworthy that after all the research on social interdependence and all the applications, the original definitions have not been revised or modified. 2. In order to implement cooperative learning successfully, educators focused attention on the identification of mediating variables. The need to increase the effectiveness of cooperative learning in dealing with a variety of educational issues such as increasing achievement, improving relationships among diverse peers, and improving self-esteem led to the examination of the internal dynamics of cooperation and the variables that mediated its effectiveness. Five mediating variables were identified (positive interdependence, individual accountability, promotive interaction, social skills, and group processing) (Johnson & Johnson, 1989, 2005). The mediating variables were used and refined to structure cooperative learning more effectively, solve problems students had in working together, and adapt cooperative learning to different student populations, subject areas, and conditions. Subsequently, the theory has been modified to include all five variables. 3. The implementation of cooperative learning has expanded the outcomes considered by social interdependence theory. Issues of school integration, inclusion of the handicapped, and the increased diversity of immigrants have focused the school on the use of cooperative learning to create positive relationships among diverse students. The emphasis on solving social problems has expanded the dependent variables to the use of positive peer pressure to increase prosocial and decrease antisocial behavior (e.g., prevention of drug abuse, inculcating academic values in at-risk students, enhancing self-esteem, preventing violence). These and other factors have resulted in the expansion of the theory to include new dependent variables and fomented considerable new research.

Summary Of his many contributions to the field of social psychology and society in general, perhaps the greatest legacy of Morton Deutsch is his theory of social interdependence. There can be little doubt that his theory is cumulative, conceptually well formulated, profound, strategic, and powerful. In addition, it serves as the foundation for several other theories. Social interdependence theory is an example of how psychological theorizing and research have resulted in valuable practical applications and how theory, research, and practice interact in ways that enhance all three. It is a middle-range theory that subsumes many other social psychological theories. It has generated hundreds of research studies that validate its basic propositions and have considerably expanded its scope. Finally, it is a useful theory, having served as a basis for the creation of cooperative learning and the structuring of teams in business, industry, and other settings. This combination of theory, research, and practice makes social interdependence theory somewhat unique and one of the most important aspects of Morton Deutsch’s legacy.

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Morton Deutsch’s Comments Chapter by David Johnson and Roger Johnson David Johnson was one of my earliest students at Teachers College. He has been enormously productive as a teacher, researcher, practitioner, and theorist. David and Roger have taught many thousands of teachers in the United States and other countries, how to develop cooperative learning in their classrooms. In their large number of publications, theoretical as well as practical, they have generously acknowledged the influence of my work. In so doing, they have made me very well known in the field of education. Paradoxically, in developing my theory of cooperation-competition and in my research testing the theory, I was not thinking of education. Having just emerged from serving in the Air Force during World War II, I was concerned with issues of war and peace and whether the members of the recently formed UN Security Council would be cooperative or competitive. These were my concerns and I formulated my theory and conducted my research. However, because I was teaching a large Introductory Psychology course at M.I.T., it was very convenient to test my theory by creating 10 small classes (5 students in each) in 5 of which students were graded cooperatively and 5 graded competitively. Although I wrote a brief article in an education journal stating the educational implications of my research, shortly after completing my research, nothing much came of it. It was only after 1963, when I established a Graduate Program in Social Psychology at Teachers College, which attracted a number of excellent students, including David Johnson, that something began to happen. The students were, of course, exposed to my theoretical ideas and research. Some became interested in applying and further developing these ideas in organizations (e.g., Harvey Hornstein), others became interested in doing this in international issues, (e.g., Jeff Rubin), and David did this in education. David, along with Roger, has developed the pedagogy, curricula, workshops, and publications to foster cooperative learning in cooperative schools. They also created a Center for Cooperative Learning at the University of Minnesota and they have had widespread effects on education. All of what I have just indicated illustrates that when one develops theory it may have social implications which were not imagined or anticipated. Kurt Lewin, my mentor, states that “there’s nothing so practical as a good theory.” The paper by David and Roger documents the validity of this statement. The rich chapter, authored by David and Roger, does focus things remarkably well. It presents an outline of what a good theory should do, it presents a clear summary of the theory, it provides a fine summary of the research relevant to the theory, and it describes some of its practical implications. In their work, David and Roger have further developed the theory and its implications, as well as stimulated and conducted much of the new implications that they have developed.

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The only issue that I have with the chapter is their employment of the term, “Social Interdependence”, to characterize the theory of cooperationcompetition. Although it is true that the theory of cooperation-competition is a theory of social interdependence, it is not the complete theory of social interdependence. My chapter, “Interdependence and Psychological Orientation,” is a beginning attempt to develop a more complete theory of interdependence. It incorporates in it the dimension of cooperation-competition and such other dimensions as power. This is a very small issue to take with a very fine chapter.

References Archer-Kath, J., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1994). Individual versus group feedback in cooperative groups. Journal of Social Psychology, 134, 681–694. Bjork, R., Dansereau, D., Druckman, D., Eich, E., Feltz, D., Jacoby, L., Johnson, D. W., Kihlstrom, J., Klatzky, R., Reder, L., Wegner, D., & Zajonc, R. (1994). Learning, remembering, believing: Enhancing human performance. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press. Brehm, J. (1966). A theory of psychological reactance. New York: Academic Press. Campbell, D. (1958). Common fate, similarity, and other indices of status of aggregates of persons as social entities. Behavioral Science, 3, 14–25. Campbell, J. (1965). The children’s crusader: Colonel Francis W. Parker. PhD dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University. Coleman, J. (1961). The adolescent society. New York: Macmillan. Coleman, P., & Tjosvold, D. (2000, July). Positive power: Mapping the dimensions of constructive power relations. Paper presented at the Social Interdependence Theory Conference, Silver Wind Farm, Minnesota. Covington, M. (2000). Goal theory, motivation, and school achievement: An integrative review. In S. Fiske, D. Schacter, & C. Zahn-Waxler (Eds.), Annual review of psychology (Vol. 51, pp. 171–200). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. Deutsch, M. (1949a). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129–152. Deutsch, M. (1949b). An experimental study of the effects of cooperation and competition upon group process. Human Relations, 2, 199–231. Deutsch, M. (1962). Cooperation and trust: Some theoretical notes. In M. R. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (pp. 275–319). Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Deutsch, M. (1968). Field theory in social psychology. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, 2nd ed., pp. 412–487). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1983). The prevention of World War III: A psychological perspective. Political Psychology, 4, 3–32. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (2006). Cooperation and competition. In M. Deutsch, P. T. Coleman, & E. C. Marcus (Eds.), The handbook of conflict resolution (2nd ed., pp. 23–42). San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass. Dewey. J. (1970). Experience and education. New York: Collier. Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

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Hooper, S., Ward, T., Hannafin, M., & Clark, H. (1989). The effects of aptitude composition on achievement during small group learning. Journal of Computer-Based Instruction, 16, 102–109. Hull, C. L. (1935). The conflicting psychologies of learning: A way out. Psychological Review, 42, 491–516. Johnson, D. W. (1970). Social psychology of education. New York: Holt. Johnson, D. W. (1983). Resolving marital conflicts constructively. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W. (2003). Social interdependence: The interrelationships among theory, research, and practice. American Psychologist, 58(11), 931–945. Johnson, D. W. (2009). Reaching out: interpersonal effectiveness and self-actualization (10th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. First edition 1972. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, F. (2009). Joining together: group theory and group skills (10th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. First edition 1975. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1974). Instructional goal structure: Cooperative, competitive, or individualistic. Review of Educational Research, 44, 213–240. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1978). Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning. Journal of Research and Development in Education, 12, 3–15. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1981). Effects of cooperative and individualistic learning experiences on interethnic interaction. Journal of Educational Psychology, 73(3), 454–459. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1989). Cooperation and competition: Theory and research. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1994). Leading the cooperative school (2nd ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1996). Cooperative learning and traditional American values. NASSP Bulletin, 80(579), 11–18. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1999a). Learning together and alone: Cooperative, competitive, and individualistic learning (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1999b). Human relations: Valuing diversity. Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (2000). Cooperative learning, values, and culturally plural classrooms. In M. Leicester, C. Modgill, & S. Modgil (Eds.), Values, the classroom, and cultural diversity (pp. 15–28). London: Cassell PLC. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (2003a). Training for cooperative groupwork. In M. West, D. Tjosvold, & K. Smith (Eds.), International handbook of organization groupwork and cooperative working (pp. 167–183). New York: John Wiley & Sons. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (2003b). Field testing integrative negotiations. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 9(1), 39–68. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (2005). New developments in social interdependence theory. Psychology Monographs, 131(4), 285–358. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2010a). Peace education in the classroom: Creating effective peace education programs. In G. Salomon & E. Cairns (Eds.), Handbook of Peace Education (pp. 223–240). New York: Psychology Press. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2010b). Teaching students how to live in a democracy. In F. Salili & R. Hoosain (Eds.), Democracy and multicultural education (pp. 201–234). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Holubec, E. (2008). Cooperation in the classroom (7th ed.). Edina, MN: Interaction Book Company. Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Maruyama, G. (1983). Interdependence and interpersonal attraction among heterogeneous and homogeneous individuals: A theoretical formulation and a metaanalysis of the research. Review of Educational Research, 53, 5–54. Johnson, D. W., Maruyama, G., Johnson, R., Nelson, D., & Skon, L. (1981). Effects of cooperative, competitive, and individualistic goal structures on achievement: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 89, 47–62.

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Johnson, D. W., & Matross, R. (1977). The interpersonal influence of the psychotherapist. In A. Gurman & A. Razin (Eds.), The effective therapist: A handbook (pp. 395–432). Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press. Kessel, K. (2000). Mediation. In M. Deutsch & P. Coleman (Eds.), The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice (pp. 522–545). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Koffka, K. (1935). Principles of gestalt psychology. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Lewin, K. (1935). A dynamic theory of personality. New York: McGraw-Hill. Lorenz, K. (1963). On aggression. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World. Madsen, M. (1967). Cooperative and competitive motivation of children in three Mexican subcultures. Psychological Reports, 20, 1307–1320. Maller, J. (1929). Cooperation and competition: An experimental study in motivation. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University. May, M., & Doob, L. (1937). Competition and cooperation. Social Science Research Council Bulletin (No. 25). New York: Social Science Research Council. Matsui, T., Kakuyama, T., & Onglatco, M. (1987). Effects of goals and feedback on performance in groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72, 407–415. Mead, M. (1937). Cooperation and competition among primitive peoples. New York: McGrawHill. Merton, R. (1957). Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press. Michaels, J. (1977). Classroom reward structures and academic performance. Review of Educational Research, 47, 87–99. Montagu, A. (1966). On being human. New York: Hawthorn. Norem-Hebeisen, A., & Johnson, D. W. (1981). Relationships between cooperative, competitive, and individualistic attitudes and differentiated aspects of self-esteem. Journal of Psychology, 49, 415–425. Piaget, J. (1950). The psychology of intelligence. New York: Harcourt. Qin, Z., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1995). Cooperative versus competitive efforts and problem solving: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 65(2), 129–143. Roseth, C. J., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. T. (2008). The relationship between interpersonal relationships and achievement within cooperative, competitive, and individualistic conditions: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 134(2), 223–246. Skinner, B. (1968). The technology of teaching. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Smith, A. (1759). The theory of moral sentiments. Reprint. Edited by D. Raphael & A. Macfie (1976). Oxford: Clarendon. Stanne, M., Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1999). Social interdependence and motor performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 125(1), 133–154. Tjosvold, D. (1989). Team organization: An enduring competitive advantage. Chichester: Wiley. Tjosvold, D., Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R., & Sun, H. (2003). Can interpersonal competition be constructive within organizations? Journal of Psychology, 137(1), 63–84. Tolman,E. C. (1932). Purposive Behavior in Animals and Men. New York: Century. Tyler, T., & Blader, S. (2000). Cooperation in groups. Philadelphia: Psychology Press. Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9, 507–533. Von Mises, L. (1949). Human action: A treatise on economics. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Chapter 4

Rethinking Intractable Conflict: The Perspective of Dynamical Systems Robin R. Vallacher, Peter T. Coleman, Andrzej Nowak, and Lan Bui-Wrzosinska

Conflict resolution should be easy. Conventional wisdom, enshrined in scholarly analyses (cf. Deutsch, Coleman, & Marcus, 2006), has it that conflict arises when people feel their respective interests or needs are incompatible. Defusing a conflict, then, is tantamount to eliminating the perceived incompatibility and creating conditions that foster common goals and values. A conflict that has become intractable should be especially easy to resolve through such interventions. After all, a conflict with no end in sight serves the interests of very few people, drains both parties’ resources, wastes energy, and diminishes human capital in service of a futile endeavor. Even a compromise solution that only partially addresses the salient needs and interests of the parties should be embraced when they realize that such a compromise represents a far better deal than pursuing a self-defeating pattern of behavior that offers them nothing but aversive outcomes with a highly uncertain prospect of goal attainment. Conflict resolution, of course, is at times anything but easy. To be sure, many antagonistic encounters stemming from incompatible interests are short-lived and run their course without causing irreparable damage to either party. But a small portion of relationships that are mired in conflict become protracted affairs, to the point of seeming intractability. Such conflicts can be extremely detrimental and become self-sustaining, displaying marked resistance to intervention even in the face of rational considerations that would seemingly defuse the animosities at work (cf. Azar, 1990; Bennett, 1996; Bercovitch, 2005; Burton, 1987; Coleman, 2003; Goertz & Diehl, 1993; Kriesberg, 2005; Marshall & Gurr, 2005; Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997). This suggests that the problem of intractability says more about psychology than it does about objective reality. An intractable conflict is one that has become

Vallacher, R. R., Coleman, P. T., Nowak, A., & Bui-Wrzosinska, L. (2010). Rethinking intractable conflict: The perspective of dynamical systems. American Psychologist, 65, 262–278. R.R. Vallacher (B) Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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entrenched in cognitive, affective, and social-structural mechanisms, a transformation that effectively distances the conflict from the perceived incompatibilities that launched it. This can be so in conflicts in marriages, in work settings, between political groups in communities, and between warring nations. As a conflict becomes a primary focus of each party’s thoughts, feelings, and actions, even factors that are irrelevant to the conflict become framed in a way that intensifies or maintains the conflict. It is though the conflict acts like a gravity well into which the surrounding mental, behavioral, and social-structural landscape begins to slide. Once trapped in such a well, escape requires tremendous will and energy and thus feels impossible.

The Dynamical Perspective This simplified scenario of intractable conflict, epitomized with the gravity well metaphor, has clear parallels to a wide variety of phenomena, not only in the social sciences but also in the physical sciences. Indeed, recent years have witnessed the advent of a perspective in the physical sciences and mathematics that identifies the dynamic and inertial processes that are common to everything from slime molds to galaxy formation. This perspective, which underlies dynamical systems theory and models of complexity, emphasizes the inevitable and spontaneous organization of discrete elements into global patterns that, once formed, resist disruption and other sources of change (cf. Holland, 1995; Kelso, 1995; Schuster, 1984; Strogatz, 2003). Even a highly volatile phenomenon—whether a tornado, a swarm of locusts, or a crowded sidewalk in Manhattan—can be viewed as the coordination of elements and forces into a higher-order entity that becomes self-sustaining and orderly. Our aim in this article is to show the relevance of this perspective for illuminating the nature of intractable conflict and to suggest new strategies for resolving such conflicts that follow from this understanding. Although developed in mathematics and the physical sciences, the principles of dynamical systems and complexity have potential application to the fundamentals of human experience. This potential has become increasingly manifest since the 1990s, with the dynamical perspective emerging as a primary paradigm for the investigation of psychological processes at different levels of personal and social reality. To date, dynamical models have been advanced to explain and predict a wide range of processes, from self-concept and social judgment to the emergence of public opinion and societal transitions (see reviews by Guastello, Koopmans, & Pincus, 2009; Vallacher & Nowak, 2007). We feel that the dynamical perspective is ideally suited to capture the dynamics of intractable conflict, and over the past several years we have begun to reframe this topic in dynamical terms (e.g., Coleman, Bui-Wrzosinska, Vallacher, & Nowak, 2006; Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, & Bui-Wrzosinska, 2007; Nowak, Vallacher, Bui-Wrzosinska, & Coleman, 2007; Coleman, Vallacher, Nowak, Bui-Wrzosinska, & Bartoli, in press). Our efforts to date have been largely theoretical, even metaphorical, in an effort to show how conflict intractability can be understood in terms of basic dynamical properties.

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Having laid this conceptual groundwork, the next step is to use the propositions and tools of the dynamical perspective to explore well-defined issues in concrete contexts involving real human conflicts.

The Problem of Intractable Conflict Before describing the dynamical perspective on intractable conflict, it is important to clarify the scope of the problem, with respect to both real-world concerns and theory construction. Protracted social conflicts represent pressing problems as we enter the 21st century, undermining the security and well being of societies worldwide. Today, there are over 30 wars and violent conflicts being waged around the globe, with approximately 40% of intra-state armed conflicts lasting for 10 years or more and 25% of wars lasting for more than 25 years (http://globalsecurity.org/ military/world/war accessed December 2008; Marshall & Gurr, 2005). The enduring conflicts in Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Cyprus, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo are just a few examples. A study of international conflicts between 1945 and 1995 identified 18 cases of intractable interstate relationships that produced 75 militarized and violent conflicts which resisted hundreds of attempts at resolution and posed serious threats to regional or international security (Bercovitch, 2005). In these settings, entire generations of youth are socialized into conflict, a condition we know to perpetuate destructive conflict. These circumstances often lead to incalculable human suffering, including destruction of vital infrastructure, division of families and communities, extreme violence, dislocation, and trauma (Cairns & Darby, 1998; Coleman, 2000). In fact, scholars have linked the events of September 11th to the socio-political conditions that fester in hot zones of intractable conflict (Crocker, Hampson, & Aall, 2005). Indeed, enduring conflicts have been linked to one half of the interstate wars since 1816, with 10 out of 12 of the most severe international wars emerging from protracted destructive relations (Bennett, 1996). The seeming immunity to resolution has led many scholars to label such conflicts intractable (cf. Coleman, 2003). Despite the widespread and destructive nature of intractable conflict, this phenomenon has yet to be conceptualized in an agreed-upon and coherent fashion. The failure to achieve consensus regarding the fundamental processes underlying intractable conflict, and the corresponding failure to generate effective strategies for transforming such conflict, is not due to a lack of effort on the part of the scientific and practitioner communities. To the contrary, numerous theories, research initiatives, and intervention strategies have been proposed over the years (cf. beyondintractability.org; Azar, 1990; Burton, 1987; Cairns & Darby, 1998; Coleman, 2003, 2004, 2006; Crocker, Hampson, & Aall, 2005a, 2005b; Goertz & Diehl, 1993; Kelman, 1999; Kriesberg, 1999, 2005; Kriesberg, Northrup, & Thorson, 1989; Lederach, 1997; Pearce & Littlejohn, 1997; Pruitt & Olczak, 1995). To some extent, the problem in framing a coherent theory reflects the inevitable idiosyncrasies of each conflict. Common factors and processes have been identified, but they represent an embarrassment of riches for theory construction. The task for

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theory construction is integrating these diverse factors into an account that is coherent, yet allows for prediction and a basis for conflict resolution in specific conflict settings. We propose that adopting the perspective of dynamical systems will promote the emergence of such an account. In particular, we suggest that the proximate causes of intractable conflict (e.g., competition over scarce resources, ideological differences, protection of personal or group identity) belie a more fundamental tendency that can be observed in systems throughout nature—the integration of basic elements into a global state that provides coherence and stability for the system. This tendency, which generates and is maintained by a host of dynamic processes, cannot be reduced to traditional motivational assumptions such as hedonism, self-esteem, or self-interest, whether immediate or long-term. The press for higher-order coherence, moreover, is robust with respect to the idiosyncratic features of specific conflict scenarios and thus provides a framework within which the complex nexus of proximate causes of intractable conflict can be understood and investigated. The central issue for conflict resolution in these cases is not how to resolve the issues in dispute, but rather how to transform the system from the coordinated ensemble of dynamics perpetuating the conflict to a different coherent state that allows for benign (or positive) relations between the parties.

The Dynamical Perspective on Intractable Conflict: Frequently Asked Questions1 Because many readers are unfamiliar with the dynamical systems perspective, it is useful to clarify the key concepts and general hypotheses associated with this approach to intractable conflict. Accordingly, we have developed a set of basic questions concerning intractable conflict for which the dynamical perspective offers fresh insight and testable propositions. Some of these questions represent fundamental features of conflict that have been addressed throughout the years. Others represent seemingly paradoxical features of conflict that are difficult to understand through the lens of canonical models of conflict. All are intended to provide readers with basic concepts and principles of complexity and dynamical systems that are useful for rethinking the nature of intractable conflict and the means by which such conflict can be transformed. We hasten to add that this account does not dismiss 1 As background for the set of questions and answers, we encourage readers to visit a website devoted to the dynamics of intractable conflict (http://www.dynamicsofconflict.iccc.edu.pl/), in which we present twenty frequently asked questions concerning the relevance and application of dynamical systems theory to social psychological phenomena in general (Vallacher, Nowak, Coleman, Bui-Wrzosinska, Bartoli, & Liebovitch). This question-answer set introduces the basic concepts, principles, and methods we consider to be especially useful in reframing personal, interpersonal, and collective processes. Nonetheless, the present question-answer set on the dynamics of intractable conflict has been written so that it can be understood in its own right by scholars and practitioners in social science, conflict resolution, and peace studies.

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classical accounts that trade on notions such as power, justice, competition over resources, identity, entrapment, and ingroup-outgroup relations. To the contrary, these concepts are incorporated into the heart of the dynamical perspective. Question 1: How does dynamical systems theory account for the genesis and maintenance of intractable conflict? Conflict is not inherently bad. To the contrary, disputes and disagreements are inevitable in human affairs and are essential to the construction of a shared reality, problem solving, participatory governance, and adaptation to changing circumstances. Conflict can escalate beyond a point that has benefits, however, promoting instead protracted malignant relations that are destructive to all parties concerned. How does a basic and largely adaptive feature of social life degenerate into a persistent pattern of behavior that brings out the worst in human nature? The key to understanding the genesis and maintenance of intractable conflict centers on the notion of attractor. In generic terms, an attractor refers to a subset of potential states or patterns of change to which a system’s behavior converges over time. Metaphorically, an attractor “attracts” the system’s behavior, so that even very different starting states tend to evolve toward the subset of states defining the attractor. In the absence of an attractor, a system can change and evolve in response to whatever influences and forces it experiences. When a system’s dynamics are governed by an attractor, however, the system is resistant to perturbing influences that would otherwise move it to a different state or pattern of changes. An external factor might promote a temporary change in the state of a system, but over time the system will return to its attractor.2 An example of an attractor for a simple system is the behavior of a pendulum in the presence of friction. No matter how one swings the pendulum (i.e., regardless of the initial conditions), after some time the pendulum will stabilize pointing downwards. Thus, all the trajectories ultimately converge on a single state that represents the attractor for pendulum dynamics, and any disturbance of this state will have only a temporary effect. A system, however, may have more than one attractor. When a coin is tossed, for example, it can land on one of its two sides, each representing an attractor for the coin’s dynamics. In complex systems—systems composed of many interconnected elements— attractors develop as the elements influence each other to achieve a relatively coherent state or pattern of changes that provides coordination for the elements (cf. Haken, 1978; Hopfield, 1982; Strogatz, 2003). The emergence of coherent system-level properties by means of self-organization represents a universal property of nonlinear dynamical systems, providing an important link between areas of 2 Three types of attractors have been identified in dynamical systems: fixed-point, periodic (including multi-periodic and quasi-periodic), and deterministic chaos. We have found fixed-point attractors to be the most relevant to issues of intractable conflict and they provide the focus of this article. Periodic and chaotic evolution are expressed in various social processes (Guastello et al., 2009; Vallacher & Nowak, 2007), though, and may prove useful in the investigation of social conflicts as well (see, e.g., Hanson & Sword, 2008).

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science as distinct as biology and economics. The synchronized flashing of fireflies (Strogatz, 2003), for example, seems quite different from the synchronized firing of neurons associated with pattern recognition and consciousness (cf. Hopfield, 1982; Tononi & Edelman, 1998), but both phenomena epitomize the tendency for the elements of a system to become coordinated and promote the emergence of coherent system-level properties and behavior. Once a system-level property has emerged, it constrains the subsequent behavior of the elements comprising the system and resists forces that threaten the system’s coherence. An attractor is thus similar to the notion of equilibrium or homeostasis (cf. Cannon, 1932; Miller, 1944).3 In many systems, the equilibrium is an energy minimum, in that it represents a state or pattern that minimizes the incompatibility among the elements. In psychological and social systems, an attractor can be described as a restricted range of mental states and actions that is commonly experienced by a person or group. At the individual level, the thoughts and feelings that arise in the stream of thought can influence each other to take on a common meaning and promote the emergence of a coherent higher-order belief or social judgment (cf. Tesser, 1978; Vallacher, Nowak, & Kaufman, 1994). Once a global mental state develops, it resists subsequent input that threatens to undermine it. In the context of a positive view of someone, for example, information that the person is “critical” may be interpreted as a virtue (“constructive”) rather than a vice (“mean-spirited”). Similar dynamics are operative in the emergence and maintenance of norms, attitudes, and fashions in a social system. Individuals, who may differ initially in their personal preferences, influence each other to adopt a shared reality (cf. Kenrick, Li, & Butner, 2003; Nowak, Szamrej, & Latané, 1990). Once a collective state comes to characterize the thought processes of interconnected individuals, there is strong resistance to new information or forces that threaten to undermine it. Thus, discrepant information is discounted or reinterpreted to fit the prevailing view and individuals holding deviant ideas are subject to intense influence from the local majority or are ostracized. Attractors do not necessarily represent goals, values, or other desired states. A person with low self-esteem, for example, may initially embrace flattering feedback from an acquaintance, but over time the person is likely to discount or reinterpret this feedback, displaying a pattern of self-evaluative thought that converges on a negative state (Swann, Hixon, Stein-Seroussi, & Gilbert, 1990; Vallacher, Nowak, Froehlich, & Rockloff, 2002). At an interpersonal level, a person might display a persistent pattern of antagonistic behavior in his or her social relations, despite efforts to avoid behaving in this manner. And in an inter-group context, warring factions may display conciliatory gestures when prompted to do so, but revert to a pattern of antagonistic thought and behavior when the outside interventions are relaxed (Coleman et al., 2007). In short, when a system’s dynamics are governed by an attractor, the system will consistently evolve to a particular state, even if this

3 More precisely, a fixed-point attractor corresponds to a stable equilibrium. An unstable equilibrium, referred to as a repellor, represents a state that the system tries to avoid.

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state is not hedonically pleasant, and will return to this state despite being perturbed by forces that might promote a more pleasant or ideal state. The attractor concept is illustrated in Fig. 4.1, which reflects the gravity well metaphor noted at the outset. The ball represents the current state of the system and the valleys represent two attractors for the system. The ball will roll down the hill and come to rest at the bottom of the valley, which represents a local energy minimum. Each attractor can be characterized in terms of two basic properties. A basin of attraction specifies the range of states that will evolve toward the attractor. This feature is represented by the width of each valley in the figure. A system with a wide basin “attracts” a broad range of states, including information and events that seem inconsistent with the attractor. A system with a narrow basin “attracts” a smaller range of states and thus is less able to absorb inconsistent ideas and events. In the figure, the basin of attraction for Attractor A is somewhat wider than the basin of attraction for Attractor B. This means that a wider variety of states will evolve toward A than toward B. An attractor can also be characterized in terms of its strength or resistance to change. This feature is represented by the depth of each valley in the figure. It is difficult to dislodge a system from a strong attractor, even when perturbed by strong external influences, whereas a relatively weak influence can dislodge a system from a weak attractor. In the figure, Attractor B is stronger than Attractor A. This means that once a system is at Attractor B, it is more difficult for it to be dislodged by external influence. We propose that a protracted malignant conflict reflects a strong attractor with a wide basin of attraction. The strength of the attractor reflects its capacity for maintaining a coherent cognitive, affective, and behavioral orientation among the parties to a conflict. When destructive conflict is associated with a deep attractor (as in Attractor B), an attempt to address the current state of the conflict corresponds to pushing the ball uphill. It not only requires considerable effort, but also is likely to be futile, since once the pushing force is relaxed, the ball will roll back to the attractor. This corresponds to some peace agreements, initiated at great expense by the international community, which eventually collapse after the fanfare of the initial breakthroughs subside. A wide basin of attraction means that a broad range of ideas and action possibilities will eventually evolve toward the dominant mental and behavioral pattern characterizing the parties to the conflict. Even positive information that contradicts the negative view of members of an outgroup is transformed by a variety of cognitive and social mechanisms until it fits the predominant view. Thus, a peaceful overture or a logical appeal emphasizing the non-productive nature

Fig. 4.1 A dynamical system with two attractors corresponding to constructive relations (A) and destructive relations (B)

A B

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of the conflict might initially be taken at face value but over time it will become reframed until it provides evidence in support of, rather than in opposition to, the predominant response tendency of the person or group. Knowing the attractor landscape of a system is essential when attempting to anticipate the fate of introducing a new element—a communication, an overture, even an unanticipated but significant event—particularly when the element is open to different interpretations or has unclear implications. Assume, for example, that a group has an attractor for negative relations with another group. The width of the basin of attraction determines whether a positive act by the other group will be assimilated to the attractor or instead represents an inconsistency that holds potential for dislodging the system from the attractor. If the attractor has a wide basin, the positive act (e.g., a conciliatory gesture) might be reframed in negative terms (e.g., as weakness or deception). If the attractor has a narrow basin, the same element cannot be as readily assimilated and might move the system to a different attractor (corresponding to reconciliation). The strength of the attractor decides whether the inconsistent element (e.g., a positive act) will have any effect in moving the system away from the negative state. If the attractor is relatively weak, the inconsistent element may influence the state of the system, perhaps moving it gradually toward a different pattern of thought and action. Additional inconsistencies might even transform the system, moving it to a different (new or latent) attractor. If the attractor is strong, however, even very inconsistent information may not affect the state of the system. A highly conciliatory gesture by the other group, for example, is unlikely to change the way the group is perceived. Instead, the gesture will be discounted in importance or suppressed in communication and discussion. At some point, though, the inconsistent elements may become sufficiently numerous or significant that they succeed in transforming the system. The stronger the attractor, the more numerous or significant the inconsistencies must be to have this effect. When this threshold is reached, the system will show a sudden and qualitative change to a new (or previously latent) attractor. We suggest that these basic processes may underlie the radical shifts observed when communities move rapidly from peace to violence (as occurred in the 1994 Rwandan genocide), or from violence to peace (as seen in the emergence of peace in Mozambique in 1992; see Bartoli, Bui-Wrzosinska & Nowak, in press). After this transformation, the system will display the same resistance to inconsistent (now negative) information, and the same nonlinear transformation when a threshold of inconsistency is reached. This scenario suggests that when a system has two strong attractors (e.g., one maintaining positive relations between two groups and one maintaining negative relations), the same element (an event, a communication, etc.) can be responded to in very different ways, depending on which attractor is currently manifest. This tendency, referred to as hysteresis, is a signature phenomenon of nonlinear dynamical systems. With respect to intractable conflict, knowing the respective strength and basins of attraction for the set of attractors defining the relationship between the parties is critical for anticipating the impact of information or events that might have a single unequivocal meaning (e.g., positive or negative) when viewed from outside the conflict.

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Question 2: How does an attractor differ from more familiar notions, such as “schema,” “goal,” “attitude,” or “disposition”? The attractor concept has much in common with these and other familiar psychological constructs. Indeed, each of them can be conceptualized as an attractor for a specific type of system. In traditional approaches, however, these phenomena are commonly investigated as fixed structures, with little consideration to their dynamic properties. By framing them in terms of attractors, we can recapture the dynamics that are often lost in theoretical accounts. A schema, for example, has attractor properties in that it constrains the dynamics of perception and thinking, causing the stream of thought concerning an object or event to converge on a specific set of values (e.g., interpretations, judgments, beliefs). A goal, in turn, represents an attractor in that it steers actions toward the attainment of a particular state, while resisting the temptations of other action possibilities. In similar fashion, the concept of attitude describes the values of thoughts, feelings, and actions that are most often experienced when one is in contact with the attitude object and to which a set of psychological mechanisms promote convergence after receiving contradictory information. Having a positive attitude toward a person, for example, does not rule out the possibility of experiencing negative feelings on specific occasions, but rather suggests that such feelings are intrinsically unstable and infrequent. A personality disposition, meanwhile, represents a person’s tendency to behave in a consistent manner despite interpersonal and situational forces that mitigate against such behavior or promote other types of behavior. It does not describe a single value on a dimension of personality, but rather the attractor for a system of interacting mechanisms producing and controlling thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in a certain domain. Reframing these familiar notions in explicitly dynamical terms highlights their common properties and thus provides theoretical unity across otherwise diverse domains and levels of experience. Investigating schemas, goals, and the like from a dynamical perspective thus may illuminate the origin, evolution, and transformation of the collective states that provide stabilization of people’s thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is worth emphasizing, too, that a dynamical system may have more than one attractor governing its dynamics. Identifying the structure of attractors in a system thus provides insight into the possible co-existence of different (and potentially conflicting) schemas, goals, attitudes, and dispositions governing a person’s functioning under different conditions. Question 3: What promotes the development of a strong negative attractor for social relations and conflict? In benign conflicts (and everyday social relations), the links among different thoughts, feelings, and action tendencies reflect a relative balance between positive (reinforcing) and negative (inhibiting) feedback. Elements linked by positive feedback reinforce and amplify one another’s current state. A hostile thought about a person or group, for example, elicits other negative thoughts or transforms neutral thoughts into negative ones, and through repeated iterations of this linkage, the separate thoughts coalesce into a coherent negative judgment. In most social contexts, however, this potential for the spread of negativity and conflict escalation is

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restrained by inhibitory feedback among elements. A hostile action toward a person, for example, might promote feelings of regret or guilt, or perhaps a consideration of the person’s benign or positive qualities. Such thoughts effectively restrain the hostile impulses, establishing a tempered stance in the social relationship. When an attractor begins to develop in a system, the balance between reinforcing and inhibiting feedback is diminished or lost altogether, with elements serving primarily to reinforce or amplify each element’s current state through positive feedback loops. By itself, any element is open to change when exposed to other elements with a different meaning or implication for action. Knowing that a person has a political ideology that differs from that of one’s ingroup, for example, may set the stage for thinking negatively about him or her, but if other elements of information have not been linked with this element, outside influences could prevent one from forming a negative judgment. Once a global assessment has developed, however, the positive feedback loops among the elements offset the impact of new information that might overwhelm any single element. So if the person’s political ideology has become linked to judgments of his or her honesty, intelligence, and patriotism, one’s judgment of the person will be more immune to subsequent discrepant information. In conflict situations, the shift toward reinforcing feedback loops promotes the emergence of strong attractors that are resilient in the face of potentially disconfirmatory events and information. At the individual level, an incongruent piece of information is considered in light of the ensemble of congruent information and is likely to be reframed to fit the prevailing meaning (e.g., Tesser, Martin, & Cornell, 1996). In social systems, communication among group members bolsters the group’s attractor for thought and behavior and buffers individuals within the group from outside influence (cf. Nowak et al., 1990). This is particularly evident in isolated, extremist groups of all flavors (see Coleman & Bartoli, 2003). In both cases, a perturbing influence might have an immediate impact on the state of the system, but over time the mutual support among the system’s elements restore the system to its attractor. It remains to be determined what factors are responsible for the breakdown in self-regulatory mechanisms in strong conflict attractors. The balance of power, the degree of interdependence, the level of cooperation versus competition, the salience of ideology and social identity, and the zero-sum nature of resources in some conflicts are plausible candidates. Other likely factors that transcend conflict per se include stress, threat, mortality salience, strong emotions, time pressure, and any condition that undermines controlled (conscious, deliberative) mental processes, which play a central role in self-regulation (Vallacher & Nowak, 1999). Identifying the factors that change the balance between positive and negative feedback in mental and social systems provides an important agenda for empirical research. Question 4: Intractable conflicts are undesirable and destructive to all parties, yet they are maintained for very long periods of time and resist attempts at resolution? Why? Traditional theories of motivation are hard pressed to explain the persistence of destructive conflict. Apart from being intrinsically unpleasant and defined in terms

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of negative emotion, protracted conflicts destroy lives, tear apart families and communities, divert attention and energy from more productive pursuits, and rarely produce happiness or even satisfaction. Nor are the goals of conflict often achieved, particularly in cases of intractable conflict that persist through many generations with no end in sight. Hedonism, enlightened self-interest, achievement motivation, and other classic motives fall short in attempting to explain this enduring feature of human existence. Even if such motives could be identified (e.g., ingroup solidarity afforded by outgroup antagonism), there are other means by which these motives could be satisfied without entailing the enormous trade-offs in costs and adverse consequences of intractable conflict. Despite the self-destructive potential of entrenched conflict, attractors satisfy two basic psychological motives. First, they provide a coherent view of the conflict, including the character of the ingroup, the nature of the relationship with the antagonistic party, the history of the conflict, and the legitimacy of claims made by each party. These views, of course, are often in direct opposition with those of members of the outgroup, as is evident in many accounts of the conflict in the Middle East (c.f. Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998; Bar-Tal, 2000). Attempts to instill a different view, even one that might allow for peaceful resolution of the conflict, threaten the subjective “accuracy” of the current view and are resisted. Thus, new information might strike an outsider as a basis for rethinking the rationale for a conflict, yet be discounted or reinterpreted by the parties themselves to make it consistent with the prevailing view of the conflict. This function of attractors is especially critical when the parties encounter information or actions that are open to interpretation. An attractor serves to disambiguate actions and to interpret the relevance and “true” meaning of information. Second, attractors provide a stable platform for action, enabling each party to a conflict to respond unequivocally and without hesitation to a change in circumstances or to an action initiated by the other party. In the absence of an attractor, the conflicting parties may experience hesitation in deciding what to do, or engage in internal dissent that could prevent each party from engaging in a clear and decisive course of action. At the individual level, such dissent is experienced as ambivalence or uncertainty. At the group or societal level, internal dissent represents disagreement among the individuals comprising the respective ingroups or societies. A conflict governed by attractor dynamics can appear not only at odds with classic hedonic concerns, but also ironic with respect to conventional notions of information processing. Classic theories and lines of research in social psychology suggest that ambiguous and conflicting information makes people vulnerable to new interpretations and attitudes, and thus sets the stage for change and transformation at the individual, interpersonal, and collective level (cf. Deutsch & Gerard, 1955; Festinger, 1954; Sherif, 1936). In mental, interpersonal, or inter-group relationships governed by attractor dynamics, however, we propose that there is an inverse relation between information ambiguity and transformation. When an attractor provides coherence for complex and ambiguous information, it is especially vulnerable to new ideas that provide a different way of integrating such information. Hence, a

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new perspective regarding an ongoing conflict, although serving the disambiguation function, represents a challenge to the established pattern of thinking and undermines the associated platform for action. Change in response to such information is therefore strongly resisted. We suggest, in fact, that the greatest potential for a sudden eruption of violence exists when there is a challenge to the validity of an attractor providing coherence for information that is difficult to verify. Ironically, when change does occur, it tends to be wholesale rather than incremental in nature, with the party’s thoughts, feelings, and action tendencies coalescing into a new attractor or moving to an existing attractor that had previously been latent in the system. This scenario has intriguing but largely untested implications for conflict escalation and resolution (developed in the response to Question 10). The heightened resistance to ideas or interpretations that challenge an attractor based on ambiguous and difficult-to-verify information can be seen at the individual level. When a subjectively important but difficult-to-verify attitude is threatened by an alternative perspective, for example, one or more cognitive mechanisms are engaged to thwart the threat and reaffirm the attitude (e.g., Tesser et al., 1996). Recent theory and research on self-concept, meanwhile, suggests that people who have high self-esteem with an unclear relation to accomplishments and other sources of objective information tend to be the most defensive in response to criticism and unflattering appraisals, often resorting to violence against the source of the threatening feedback (cf. Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996). We suggest that this connection characterizes attractor dynamics at the level of groups and societies as well. If this is indeed the case, it provides insight into certain intractable conflicts that erupt into violence when new information calls into question the legitimacy of one or both party’s stable pattern of thought and behavior. The ironic connection between the complexity and ambiguity of information and a group’s resistance to change has yet to be empirically verified and thus provides a promising agenda for research on the dynamics of conflict. Question 5: At what level of social reality do attractors of conflict exist? Attractors represent formal properties of dynamical systems and thus characterize the dynamics of systems at all levels of reality. Cognitive processes and inter-group relations are clearly different phenomena, for example, but each can be described in terms of stable patterns (e.g., interpretation in cognition, social distance in inter-group relations) that provide coherence and unequivocal platforms for action. Accordingly, conflict can be characterized with attractors at different levels of social reality. At the level of the mind, attractors represent stable patterns of thought and affect concerning the parties to the conflict (e.g., oneself and another person in interpersonal conflict, the ingroup and outgroup in inter-group conflict), as well as the history and nature of the interpersonal or inter-group relationship. At the interpersonal and inter-group levels, attractors represent stable and recurring patterns of relations between the parties to the conflict. The mere mention of the conflicting party—let alone an encounter with the party—may promote well-learned and automatic response tendencies at different levels of action meaning. Because of the feedback among levels in a dynamical system, an attractor that initially develops at one level of reality is likely to forge attractors at other levels. A

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conflict may develop over issues of resource allocation, for example, and the negative interactions associated with this conflict could promote psychological attractors (i.e., negative attitudes) that are consistent with, and serve to maintain, the interpersonal conflict. Once a psychological attractor develops, the conditions that generated the conflict (i.e., resource allocation) could be mitigated without resolving the conflict if the attractor is strong and has a wide basin of attraction. The change in objective conditions, for example, could be interpreted in a manner that reinforces rather than undermines the negative feelings toward the other party. In conflict situations, then, an interpersonal or inter-group attractor promotes a social judgment attractor, which then reinforces the interpersonal attractor, and so on, in a reciprocal reinforcing feedback loop. Because of the feedback linking levels, a conflict initially associated with one level of reality is likely to spread to other levels, creating the potential for overlapping and mutually reinforcing attractors that serve to anchor the conflict. This expansion of attractors can become encoded in cultural beliefs and traditions, adding yet another level to the conflict that can promote long-term intransigence and resistance to attempts at conflict resolution. For example, the annual Orange walk in Northern Ireland each July, which celebrates the Protestant victory of Prince William of Orange over King James II in 1690, evokes past grievances and losses associated with the protracted conflict over Ireland that trigger latent psycho-social attractors for more hostile Catholic-Protestant relations. Question 6: How can one identify the attractors in an intractable conflict? In one sense, this is a simple issue, almost trivial. If people are embroiled in an ongoing conflict, their respective patterns of thought and behavior are manifest and need only be described. But in another sense, the identification of attractors in a conflict is a very challenging problem. This is true for both descriptive and formal reasons. Descriptively, the functional equivalence (equifinality) of thought and behavior can make it difficult to determine whether a party to a conflict is displaying a stable pattern, engaging in routine but non-meaningful action, or acting in accord with very different concerns from one occasion to the next. Consider, for example, a person who attacks someone’s line of reasoning, prevents another person from taking a short-cut through his or her territory, and refuses to answer an e-mail message from yet another person. Does this represent a pattern of behavior that could qualify as an attractor, or do these acts each reflect entirely different meanings despite their similarity with respect to an “antagonism” attitude or schema? Perhaps the attack represents “constructive criticism,” the territorial defense represents “reinforcing norms of appropriate conduct,” and the e-mail neglect represents “setting priorities in one’s work.” More generally, because actions can be identified and performed with respect to widely different higher-level meanings (Vallacher & Wegner, in press), it can prove difficult (and misleading) to judge whether there is a pattern in a person’s behavior, and if so, what the pattern is. Formally, the identification of an attractor is difficult because an attractor is defined mathematically in terms of differential or difference equations, or topographically in terms of phase space portraits (cf. Liebovitch, 1998; Nowak &

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Lewenstein, 1994). In real-world conflict settings, these formal approaches to attractor identification may be unrealistic or impossible (see Gottman, Swanson, & Swanson, 2002; Kugler & Coleman, 2009; and Losada & Markovitch, 1990, for notable exceptions). However, attractor identification is possible because of the two properties described above: the attractor’s strength and basin of attraction. The basin of attraction is manifest as the diversity of information or events that are assimilated to the attractor. For an attractor with a wide basin of attraction, even highly discrepant information (e.g., a positive overtures by an antagonist) is interpreted or reframed to make it consistent with the attractor. Strength is manifest as the resistance to change in the person or group’s pattern of thought and behavior in response to events or information that are outside the basin of attraction. If the attractor is relatively weak, the system might change in response to even a few inconsistencies that are beyond the basin of attraction. If the attractor is strong, however, the system will resist change until a great deal of information or evidence outside of the basin of attraction has accumulated. Such information might be discounted or suppressed until a critical threshold of inconsistency is reached, at which point the system will demonstrate a catastrophic change to a new or previously latent attractor that provides coherence for the perturbing information. These properties provide basic guidelines for how one might identify the attractors in an intractable conflict. The general strategy is to assess how a person or group responds to conflict-relevant information that varies along a basic dimension (e.g., positive vs. negative actions by an outgroup). The range of information on this dimension that is assimilated to the attractor (e.g., by reinterpretation or rationalization) would indicate the width of the basin of attraction. The manner in which a person or group responds to information outside the basin of attraction would indicate the strength of the attractor. A strong attractor would be indicated if a large amount of such information is tolerated before the system undergoes change, and if the change is catastrophic (sudden and wholesale) rather than incremental when it occurs. Before this tipping point is reached, a person or group with a strong attractor is likely to display rapid and highly defensive responses to the inconsistent information. Implementing this general strategy in a systematic fashion to identify the attractors in a conflict situation represents a high priority for research. Question 7: How is “power” incorporated into the dynamical account of conflict? It is probably the exception rather than the rule that two interdependent entities— whether individuals, groups, or nations—have equal power. Personal relations are often characterized by differential dependency, with the less dependent person in a position to dictate what the dyad does (Rusbult, 1983; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959); social or demographic groups in a society differ in their social capital, wealth, and education, and these assets translate directly into differential influence in shaping public policy (Deutsch, 2006; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999); and nations differ enormously in their respective military prowess, access to resources, and global influence (Zartman & Rubin, 2002). Despite the ubiquity of power asymmetry,

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intractable conflict is a relatively rare occurrence in social life (Bercovitch, 2005; Fisher, 2006). Such quiescence, of course, could simply reflect recognition of reality and a corresponding resignation concerning one’s fate on the part of the less powerful entity. Because the more powerful entity is expected to prevail if conflict were to become manifest (e.g., over access to resources), the less powerful person does not provoke such conflicts and is prepared to settle for less if a conflict cannot be avoided. From this “realism” perspective, if the less powerful entity saw an opportunity to change the power imbalance in its own favor, it would experience little hesitation in doing so. The dynamical account provides a different way of reconciling power asymmetry with peaceful co-existence among interdependent entities. Over time, the pattern of interaction and influence between such entities is likely to be internalized by both entities as an attractor that serves the key functions of attractors described earlier: coherent understanding and an unequivocal action orientation. Thus, the attractor provides a lens for constructing the past, interpreting the present, and anticipating the future, and it creates a stable platform for behavior vis a vis one another (e.g., Coleman et al., 2007). And because attractors resist destabilization, perturbations to the relationship will be actively resisted—not only by the more powerful party, but the less powerful party as well. A change in status upsets the equilibrium in the relationship, thereby reducing the coherence of both parties’ thoughts and feelings and undermining the relevance of their action scripts. So rather than embracing an opportunity to change the balance of power, the less powerful entity attempts to reinstate the status quo. Just such counter-intuitive effects have been documented in research on system justification theory (cf. Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004) and social dominance theory (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Members of disadvantaged groups (e.g., racial and ethnic minorities), for example, commonly justify the status quo and feel that the social system perpetuating their lot in life is basically fair (see also Lerner, 1980). Even when disadvantaged people publicly express dissatisfaction with the status quo, assessment of their unconscious attitudes often reveals a pattern of ingroup and outgroup evaluation that is consistent with the power asymmetry (Jost, Pelham, Brett, & Carvallo, 2002). As with other instances of attractor dynamics, this tendency illustrates how the functions served by a stable attractor trump the usual panoply of basic motives (e.g., hedonism, enlightened self-interest, achievement, self-esteem). This does not mean that power imbalance is irrelevant to conflict. Asymmetry in influence and access to resources clearly can fuel antagonism between individuals, groups, and nations. Marriages are terminated when dominance and subjugation become unbearable for one of the partners, for example, and social systems undergo civil wars and revolutions in response to real or perceived power asymmetries between groups. In the dynamical account, this effect occurs when one or both parties escape the pull of the existing attractor, enabling information and events to be interpreted in a different way and providing a new platform for action. There are two scenarios by which this can happen (described more fully in the response to Question 10).

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First, new information and events can be encountered that are outside the basin of attraction. The more powerful entity, for example, may engage in an especially unwarranted fashion that cannot be rationalized as acceptable (e.g., brutality, humiliation). Or information may come to light about the high power entity that cannot be reconciled with prevalent beliefs and judgments concerning the entity (e.g., evidence that the high power entity’s flattering history had been falsified). Even if the inconsistent actions and pieces of information are initially discounted or suppressed, they hold potential for sowing the seeds of an alternative attractor for the relationship. Once a threshold of inconsistency is crossed, the relationship can undergo a profound transformation as the attractor loses its power to constrain thoughts, feelings, and actions concerning the relationship. This is the prototypical scenario of many insurgency movements, such as that depicted between the Algerian independence forces and the French in the classic film, The Battle of Algiers. A new configuration can then emerge to provide coherence and a far different platform for action. Second, an attractor can lose its pull if the reinforcing feedback loops among elements are weakened or reversed. The disassembly of an attractor is a difficult task, although contemporary research in social psychology provides clues how this can be accomplished. Inducing people to focus on the details of an event or a communication, for example, serves to isolate these elements and thus weaken the connections among them (cf. Vallacher, Nowak, & Miller, 2003). This is a tactic often employed in mediation when disputants are encouraged to explore the specific needs and interests that underlie their more recalcitrant global positions regarding a conflict or relationship (see Kressel, 2006). The press for coherence associated with attractor dynamics then sets the stage for the emergence of a new pattern of thought and behavior concerning the relationship. Both scenarios are more likely to alter attractors for power relations under conditions of instability. When marriage partners experience a marked change in their life circumstances (e.g., job loss, winning a lottery), for example, new information and events are experienced that cannot easily be assimilated to their existing attractor for the relationship. And because novel information and events are experienced in detailed (low-level) terms, there is potential for the emergence of an entirely different attractor that links the low-level elements in an alternative configuration. In similar fashion, inter-group relations characterized by power asymmetry can become destabilized during periods of rapid societal transition (Nowak & Vallacher, 2001), setting the stage for the emergence of a new attractor that reflects dissatisfaction with, rather than justification of, the power imbalance. During such periods, those individuals in the low-power group who are better educated or have more social contacts outside the group are typically on the vanguard of change (see reviews by Gurr, 1970; Tyler & Smith, 1998). Presumably, such individuals have greater access to information that undermines the existing attractor or that suggests alternative perspectives and action possibilities concerning relations with the more powerful group (Gersick, 1991). In a rapidly changing world, the balance of power between groups and nations may change frequently. Because such changes upset an established equilibrium,

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they unleash emotions and generate new actions which can produce a spike in the frequency and intensity of conflict. The group with greater power is likely to feel considerable threat as the attractor connoting dominance is challenged or disassembled. The violence exhibited by lower middle-class males in the southern United States in response to desegregation in the mid 20th century is an example of this scenario. The group with less power, meanwhile, may be especially volatile as negative feelings (e.g., humiliation and anger), unfulfilled wishes, and suppressed actions become manifest. Even if there is progression toward redressing a power imbalance, such feelings may intensify rather than diminish if the rate of change is perceived to be insufficient by the ascendant group. Theory and research on personal satisfaction suggests that the rate of progress in achieving one’s goals is more important than is the magnitude of the discrepancy between one’s current state and the desired states of affairs (Carver & Scheier, 1999; Hsee, Abelson, & Salovey, 1991). This can be seen at the level of intergroup relations as well. Thus, movement toward greater power symmetry may paradoxically lead to increased dissatisfaction in accordance with relative deprivation (cf. Merton, 1957). Such a “rising expectations” scenario characterized the push toward equality on the part of African Americans and women in American society in the 1960s. From a dynamical perspective, the rate of progress toward a desired state of affairs (such as equality of power) is one of many possible temporal patterns of change in both self-regulatory dynamics (Vallacher & Nowak, 1999) and social change (Nowak & Vallacher, 2001). There may be short bursts of acceleration, for example, that are punctuated by longer periods of stabilization. It remains for future research to identify the dynamic patterns characterizing changes in power relations, both between individuals and between groups, and to map these patterns onto different scenarios of conflict and peaceful transformation. The dynamical perspective provides a parsimonious integration of conflicting accounts of power asymmetry—one emphasizing stability (e.g., system justification, restoration of the status quo), the other emphasizing the potential for conflict (e.g., dissatisfaction, redress of the power imbalance). Research explicitly addressing this account has yet to be conducted, however. Computer simulations, experiments, and archival analyses are needed to identify the critical factors (e.g., social instability) underlying the proposed transformation in attractor dynamics (cf. Nowak, 2004). If the account is confirmed, an ethical question concerning intervention arises: is it preferable to promote peaceful relations characterized by power asymmetry or to promote equality if that entails the genesis of conflict and violence? Perhaps the answer to this question lies in developing a better understanding of the necessary yet not destabilizing rate of change between groups in conflict over power. Question 8: How is “justice” incorporated into the dynamical account of conflict? Justice is an important foundation for interpersonal and inter-group relations. It tempers self-interest, promotes the emergence of social norms, and can generate cooperative and altruistic behavior. In this sense, a concern with justice serves to stabilize social relations and provides regulatory mechanisms (inhibiting feedback

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loops) that constrain each party’s behavior. But justice is often in “the eye of the beholder,” and this subjectivity can serve to intensify rather than mitigate conflict under some circumstances. Particularly when there is an unequal division of resources, the potential for conflict is enhanced when the parties frame the issue in terms of justice. The disadvantaged group may see itself as victimized and view the other group as unfair, greedy, and bad. These perceptions legitimize aggressive action in service of restoring justice. For its part, the advantaged group may consider its greater access to resources to be a reflection of its superiority and greater deservingness. It may see the other group as inferior and deserving of its lesser access to resources. Both groups, in other words, frame the conflict in terms of justice, but with entirely different notions of what constitutes justice. In effect, justice often amounts to justification (Lerner, 1980) and is therefore prone to the various cognitive mechanisms that are employed to protect a coherent worldview against contradictory ideas and actions. Disagreements about justice are not an inevitable consequence of inequality, however. Once a pattern of thought and behavior concerning an interpersonal or inter-group relationship is established, it functions as an attractor that resists change. If two groups have a long history of inequality, and if this state of affairs is legitimatized by cultural values and a shared historical narrative, there may be little impetus for change. Maintenance of the status quo is clearly advantageous for the person or group with greater access to resources. But as noted in the response to Question 7, low power groups are also inclined to bolster the status quo and thus tend to resist changes that would be to their advantage (Jost et al., 2004; Sidanius & Pratto, 1999). Attractor dynamics, in other words, may be more important than simple self-interest in dictating how the groups define justice and deal with inequality. As with power asymmetry, basic conditions must be met before injustice in a relationship is recognized and serves to generate actions aimed at restoring justice (see Merton, 1957; Gurr, 1971; Deutsch, 1985). It remains for future research to identify these conditions and document their effects at different levels of social reality (interpersonal, inter-group, international). Question 9: What is the role of religion in the origin, maintenance, and resolution of conflict? Religion can play very different, even inconsistent, roles in conflict. On one hand, religion provides constraints on actions of a self-serving or hedonistic nature, while promoting actions that reflect moral values conducive to peaceful and cooperative relations with other people. Most religions emphasize impulse control, tolerance, and a concern for the welfare of others. These features of religiosity hold potential for the prevention and peaceful resolution of conflict. On the other hand, most religions divide mankind into good versus evil, saints versus sinners. The distinction between good and evil is too often manifest as the distinction between those who share one’s religious beliefs and those who don’t. Thus, even if someone from a different faith behaves in a morally commendable fashion, he or she may be judged negatively (e.g., as an infidel) by virtue of worshipping a different god or embracing a different creation myth.

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When religious faiths fall along ethnic, regional, demographic, or national lines, religiosity tends to intensify the natural tendency to favor one’s ingroup (e.g., one’s nation) over an outgroup (e.g., another nation). If conditions promote ingroup versus outgroup conflict (e.g., competition over land or resources), the polarization of ingroup – outgroup dynamics associated with religion can enhance rather than defuse conflict. Indeed, by perceiving members of the outgroup as evil or damned, the constraints (inhibiting feedback) against aggression and violence are weakened. Ironically, then, religion can promote behavior that is antithetical to the moral values it promulgates. Framed in dynamical terms, religion captures the defining properties of an attractor. A religious faith provides certainty: a coherent view of the world, both with respect to moral values and cosmological truth, and a stable platform for personal and collective action. Information or events that are inconsistent with the religious worldview represent potential threats to the validity of that view and thus can promote intense defensive reactions (as seen in the current debates between creationism and the theory of evolution). The cognitive biases observed when personal attitudes are contradicted are on full display when information or events challenge a group’s religious beliefs. Indeed, because religion by definition reflects faith rather than reason or empirical evidence, discrepant information or events are likely to be experienced as especially threatening and promote very intense reactions in service of reinstating the mental and social system at its attractor. In the modern world, the threats to one’s religion are numerous, from advances in science that challenge the wisdom of sacred texts (e.g., the origin and age of the universe) to contact with people from cultures with different religious convictions and lifestyles. From this perspective, it is not surprising that many intense and prolonged conflicts today are associated with religious differences. Because the central controversies cannot be resolved conclusively (e.g., determining which god is the real one or which prophet is likely to be vindicated), religious-based conflicts are likely to be protracted, with victory and defeat (or genocide, at the extreme) representing the only perceived means of terminating the conflict. This gloomy scenario is especially likely to be manifest under conditions that reinforce a group’s conviction that other groups must recognize the zero-sum nature of moral and cosmological truth. Although religious differences have been associated with inter-group conflicts throughout human history, other factors often must be operative before religion can bring ingroup – outgroup relations to the threshold of serious conflict and warfare. People of different faiths can co-exist peacefully, for example, if the available resources do not have a zero-sum quality and the groups are not in a state of confined interdependence (e.g., Hardin, 1968). It is also the case that religion is often used to justify aggression that is actually undertaken for very different reasons. Thus, ingroup leaders sometimes exploit religious differences to engage citizens who would otherwise not be inclined to aggress against the outgroup. Finally, most religions converge on moral codes that are beneficial for social relations. Efforts designed to emphasize these rules of interpersonal behavior can offset the intolerance associated with good versus evil categorization. There are numerous instances

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in history when calls to a higher morality have defused conflicts and brought about interpersonal and inter-group harmony. Question 10: How can an intractable conflict be resolved or at least transformed into a benign conflict? A defining feature of attractor dynamics is the tendency to resist external influence and to return to the attractor if influence is temporarily successful. Attempts to challenge directly the validity or practicality of an attractor for intractable conflict are therefore often doomed to fail, and in fact are likely to intensify people’s beliefs and energize their response tendencies. Imagine, for instance, your reaction to an acquaintance who takes it upon himself to explain to you in detail why your pro-choice (or pro-life) position on abortion is erroneous. Odds are, you will likely tune him out, confront him, or move away and avoid him in the future. This makes the resolution of intractable conflict a daunting task. There are three basic scenarios, however, by which one might change the dynamics of an intractable conflict. In one scenario, an understanding of how attractors are created can be utilized to “reverse engineer” a malignant attractor. Attractors develop as separate elements (e.g., issues, events, pieces of information) become linked by reinforcing feedback to promote a global perspective and action orientation. Reverse engineering thus entails changing some of the feedback loops from reinforcing to inhibitory, thereby lowering the level of coherence in the system. One strategy is to reinstate the salience of individual elements, devoid of their integration with other elements. Psychological research provides clues regarding this “disassembly process” (cf. Vallacher, Nowak, Markus, & Strauss, 1998; Vallacher & Wegner, in press). For example, disruptions to ongoing action tend to make people sensitive to the over-learned details of the action, as do instructions to focus on the details of a narrative rather than focusing on the narrative’s larger meaning. This occurred in Boston in 1994, when a series of violent shootings at family-planning clinics there forced the pro-life and pro-choice communities to carefully re-examine their activities and rhetoric and to forge new approaches to the issues. When habitual actions and generalized judgments and beliefs are deconstructed in this way, people become vulnerable to new interpretations that provide an avenue of emergence to a coherent perspective. In effect, the task is to recapture the complexity of a conflict attractor and reconfigure the elements to promote a more benign form of coherence. In the second scenario, the key is moving the system out of its manifest attractor into a latent attractor that is defined in terms of benign or even positive thoughts, actions, and relationships. In most interpersonal and inter-group contexts, there are many elements of relevant information and many possible ways of configuring these elements to achieve a coherent perspective and a stable platform for action. Just as perceptual elements can be organized to promote different Gestalts, social information can take on a host of different meanings with diverse action possibilities. At any given time, however, only one attractor is likely to be manifest in people’s orientation toward other people or groups—just as a single figure-ground relation characterizes perception at a single point in time. The other possible attractors are latent and may be invisible, both to the parties involved and to outside observers.

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Yet these latent attractors may become manifest in sudden fashion under some circumstances and promote a notable change in the relations among people and groups. There are reasons for suspecting the existence of latent attractors in relationships whose manifest tendencies are malignant. Many protracted conflicts, for example, involve a long history between the parties, including stretches of time characterized by positive relations. The relations between Ukraine and Poland, for example, go back many decades, and during this time mutually beneficial trade and cultural relations were often manifest. Indeed, the strained relations that developed as a result of World War II can be considered the exception rather than rule in UkrainianPolish relations. Presumably, then, there is a latent attractor for positive relations between the two societies that was supplanted by a negative manifest attractor after the war. With this in mind, it is not surprising that the mutual antagonism gave way in a dramatic fashion to mutual support during the Orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004–2005. In effect, the two countries shifted their respective figure-ground relations and began to interact in a qualitatively different manner that reflected an attractor that had been latent for years. We propose that latent attractors may be an inevitable consequence of developing a manifest attractor. In emphasizing some elements while ignoring or downplaying others to bolster a particular orientation toward another person or group, people often have to suppress or discount particular ideas, feelings, and action tendencies. These suppressed elements of thought and behavior may become self-organized to promote their own attractor, in the same way that marginalized individuals in a social system form clusters with internal coherence (Nowak et al., 1990). Under certain conditions, the latent attractors formed in this fashion may suddenly become manifest, just as minority groups can suddenly exert significant influence in a social system when various conditions are met (cf. Moscovici, 1985; Nowak & Vallacher, 2001). This scenario has some surprising, even ironic, consequences. Even a very strong attractor will have a limited basin of attraction and thus will exclude a wide variety of information that is discrepant from the attractor’s value. An explicitly peaceful overture by an outgroup, for example, is difficult to reconcile with the ingroup’s negative attitude and thus may be discounted as an anomaly. Should enough incidents like this occur, however, they may begin to coalesce into a new attractor reflecting benign or positive attitudes toward the outgroup. At this point, if an event or intervention temporarily defuses the conflict, the newly formed latent attractor could suddenly become manifest and redirect the ingroup’s thoughts, feelings, and actions vis a vis the outgroup. The existence of latent attractors serves as a reminder that change often conforms to a non-linear scenario. What appears to be sustained antagonism between two groups can suddenly give way to relatively benign or even positive relations if an event—even a seemingly insignificant one—pushes the group out of its current basin of attraction into the basin of a previously latent attractor. Thus, although peacekeeping missions, conflict resolution initiatives, reconciliation processes, and trust-building activities often appear to be largely ineffective in situations locked in

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a protracted struggle, they may be acting to establish or bolster a sufficiently wide and deep attractor basin for moral, humane forms of inter-group interactions that provide the foundation for a stable, peaceful future. The gradual and long-term construction of a new attractor may be imperceptible, but it prepares the ground for a positive state that would be impossible without these actions. By the same reasoning, of course, peaceful relations between groups may show a sudden change to a negative or even violent pattern of intergroup behavior if conditions have created the foundation for a latent attractor comprised of negative thoughts, feelings, and action tendencies. It remains for future research to assess the viability of this scenario, and to identify the conditions that can promote the sudden salience of a previously latent attractor. The third scenario goes beyond moving the system between its existing attractors to systematically changing the number and types of attractors. In a nonlinear dynamical system, a wide range of variables can produce quantitative effects in the system’s behavior, but usually only a small subset of them promote noteworthy qualitative changes. Small changes in the value of these control parameters can produce bifurcations—qualitative changes in the system’s attractor landscape (cf. Nowak & Lewenstein, 1994; Ruelle, 1989). Bifurcations can take many forms, including a change from a single attractor to two attractors, a change from a single attractor to a periodic attractor (oscillation between two or more coherent states), and a sequence of changes from a single attractor through periodic and multi-periodic attractors to a chaotic attractor (a complex trajectory of behavior that never repeats and is highly sensitive to initial conditions). In each case, bifurcations occur at specific thresholds in the values of the control parameter. To translate this general scenario into a specific strategy for conflict resolution, it is necessary to identify the relevant control parameters that have potential to change the attractor landscape constraining the behavior patterns in an antagonistic relationship. Attention then can turn to investigating the form that bifurcations are likely to take in response to changes in the values of these factors. Does enhancing police security in a community, for example, simply strengthen the community’s attractor for hostile relations with the local government (as seen in 2005 when the French Government sent swat teams into immigrant neighborhoods to quell unrest) or does it qualify as a control parameter that transforms the pattern of thinking and behavior of the community regarding the government? If this factor functions as a control parameter, does it promote the emergence of a new attractor (e.g., positive relations)? Does it introduce periodic movement between very different attractors (e.g., oscillation between positive and negative relations)? Or does it promote a trajectory of chaotic movement over time between very different patterns (e.g., seemingly random swings in thought and behavior that are highly sensitive to minor events)? The identification of control factors and their effects on the attractor landscape of a system characterized by intractable conflict are daunting tasks but the potential payoff for success is significant. With this in mind, we have recently incorporated this approach into a simulation platform for teaching conflict negotiation and peacebuilding (Nowak, Bui-Wrzosinska, Coleman, Vallacher, Bartkowski,

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& Jochemczyk, 2010). Changing the attractor landscape of a relationship mired in conflict may hold the key to promoting a wholesale transformation of the relationship and increasing the likelihood of sustainable peace. Question 11: Where do we go from here? The dynamical perspective conceptualizes intractable conflict in terms of generic processes that underlie diverse phenomena across the social and physical sciences. This does not mean that intractable conflicts are “nothing but” examples of generic processes. Human experience is clearly unique in many respects, and one should never lose sight of the idiosyncratic factors relevant to any particular conflict scenario. The dynamical account provides scaffolding, though, on which such factors can be layered and put into perspective. To build on this scaffold, it is necessary to translate dynamical concepts and principles into hypotheses and develop rigorous and reliable empirical methods to test these hypotheses. Because conflict is a multi-faceted phenomenon that is manifest in different ways at multiple levels of social reality, the empirical approach must be correspondingly diverse and flexible, entailing the coordination of laboratory experiments, field research, archival data analyses, and the development of formal models implemented in computer simulations. Accordingly, a cross-disciplinary approach is called for. Our own team represents the expertise of experimental social psychology, peace psychology, cultural anthropology, nonlinear dynamical systems, and computer science. The following issues, noted in the responses to the basic questions, are currently at the forefront of our research agenda. • First and foremost, research is essential to verify the connection between conflict intractability and attractor dynamics. Are intractable conflicts, as we propose, associated with attractors that are exceptionally strong and have a wide basin of attraction? Is one property more central to intractability than the other? Are attractor dynamics fundamentally the same for conflicts at different levels of social reality (e.g., interpersonal, inter-group, international)? Although a few studies have provided preliminary support for this proposition (see Gottman, Swanson, & Swanson, 2002; Kugler & Coleman, 2009; Losada & Markovitch, 1990), much work remains to be done. • What factors promote the imbalance of reinforcing and inhibiting feedback loops that we propose to be responsible for the transformation of a benign conflict into a protracted, malignant conflict? To what extent is the hypothesized breakdown in regulatory dynamics associated with documented antecedents of destructive conflict such as incompatible needs and values, power struggles, perceived injustice, segregated social groups, and ideological differences? Do the factors associated with regulatory failures in everyday life—stress, intense emotion, time pressure, threat, and so forth—also undermine the operation of inhibiting feedback loops in conflict scenarios and thereby promote the evolution of an entrenched attractor for sustained conflict? • What is the relationship between the complexity and ambiguity of conflictrelevant information and conflict intensity? If, as we propose, a primary

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motivation of adversaries to a conflict is maintaining the coherence of their respective cognitive, affective, and behavioral orientations, the potential for negative interactions should be enhanced when new information and events threaten one or both parties’ attractors. Research directly testing this ironic connection between basic properties of information and conflict remains to be undertaken. Can conflicts be transformed by reverse engineering, as we have suggested? Social psychological research has shown that global mental states can be effectively disassembled into their lower-level elements, creating the potential for a wholesale change in people’s understanding of their own and others’ actions (Vallacher & Wegner, in press). Is this approach relevant to the disassembly of strong attractors associated with intractable conflict? If so, what specific strategies would be most effective in breaking the reinforcing feedback loops among elements, in introducing inhibiting feedback loops, or in isolating the elements and thereby increasing the complexity in a coherent system of thought and behavior associated with conflict? What is the role of latent attractors in conflict transformation? Do they, as we propose, create the potential for sudden and catastrophic change in the nature of the relationship between adversaries in a protracted conflict? What factors promote the development of latent attractors? Does information that cannot be assimilated to an attractor create the seeds of an alternative pattern of thought and behavior? If so, would attempts to suppress or discount inconsistent information have the ironic effect of undermining a manifest attractor and promoting a transition to a fundamentally different perspective? This possibility resonates with contemporary research in social psychology (e.g., Wegner, 1994) and could be tested in experimental research. How and to what extent do concepts known to be relevant to conflict escalation and stalemates configure the dynamic properties of long-term conflicts? Competition over scare resources, power differences, injustice, ideology, and religion, for example, are critical to the genesis, maintenance, and transformation of interpersonal and inter-group relations, but their respective roles have yet to be reframed in explicitly dynamical terms and tested in various conflict scenarios. Identifying the essential control parameters responsible for altering the attractor landscape of intractable conflict (e.g., promoting specific types of bifurcations) is thus a high priority for research. Are there asymmetries in the operation of positive and negative attractors? Attractor dynamics are not limited to negative interactions but have been shown to characterize benign and positive social relationships as well (cf. Gottman et al., 2002; Kugler & Coleman, 2009; Losada & Markovitch, 1990; Nowak & Vallacher, 1998). In a close relationship, for example, the psychological and behavioral processes of each party tend to converge on positive states. Negative thoughts and antagonistic actions may be experienced, but these states tend to be short-lived, yielding over time to the positive sentiments and behaviors defining the relationship attractor. Are attractor dynamics symmetric with respect to benign (or positive) and antagonistic relationships? Is the basin of attraction, for example, wider for a relationship characterized by hostility than one

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characterized by affection? Assuming one can calibrate the respective intensity of feeling in negative and positive relationships, is there greater attractor strength (resistance to change) in one or the other type of relationship?

Conclusion and Future Iterations The perspective we have advanced suggests that the most visible causes of intractable conflict—scarce resource competition, ideological differences, and the like—are not necessarily the critical factors for understanding the genesis, maintenance, and resolution of such conflicts. The proximate causes are not to be trivialized, of course, but they need to be appreciated in the context of basic dynamics that are often opaque—both to observers and to the parties to the conflict. Thus, a conflict progresses toward intractability as specific mental states (thoughts, beliefs, memories) and action tendencies coalesce into a strong attractor that provides coherence and an unequivocal platform for action. Resolving an intractable conflict, then, is tantamount to changing the systems’ attractors. To date, we have identified three strategies for doing so: disassembling an attractor for conflict and promoting the emergence of a new (benign) attractor; strengthening a latent attractor for positive relations; and changing the attractor landscape in a system. Yet other insights into the nature of intractable conflict are destined to emerge as concerted efforts are undertaken to investigate intractable conflict from the perspective of complexity and dynamical systems (see, e.g., Hanson & Sword, 2008). The dynamical perspective has proven to be both integrative and heuristic in many areas of science, establishing invariant principles that link seemingly distinct topics and generating new research agendas in these fields. We anticipate that this approach will serve these functions for the science of conflict as well. But more importantly, we hope that the identification of fundamental conflict dynamics will provide new strategies designed to transform conflicts that serve no one’s purposes yet seem impervious to resolution. Intractability might turn out to be as much an illusion as the conviction of warring parties that each has a monopoly on truth and value. Morton Deutsch’s Comments Paper by Robin Vallacher, Peter Coleman, Andrzej Nowak, and Lan BuiWrzosinska This is a profoundly important paper which provides a new way of thinking about intractable conflicts. Intractable conflicts can occur at all levels: the interpersonal, the intergroup, and the international. These conflicts can be very destructive to the parties directly involved but also to others. Thus, an intractable conflict between a husband and wife about child rearing can not only embitter their relations but also be very harmful to their children. The enduring Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not only affects the Israelis and

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Palestinians, it has effects on international terrorism, on other countries in the Middle East, and on the United States to name only some of the parties affected. Intractable conflicts are relatively rare. Coleman (2011), in his superb book on intractable conflict, estimates that they are only 5% of all conflicts. Nevertheless, because of their frequent destructiveness, they deserve considerably more attention than they have had. I am delighted that an international research group has developed which focuses on difficult and protracted conflicts, with support from grants made to the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), which is directed by Peter Coleman. This international group includes the authors of the chapter, Rethinking Intractable Conflict, and Katharina Kugler of Germany, as well as others. Much of the theoretical and research work that many of my students and I have focused on was more “preventive” rather than “therapeutic” in its orientation. We were interested in how to prevent destructive, intractable conflicts. We focused on the question of what determines whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course. Our hope was that in doing so we would develop knowledge that would be helpful in fostering constructive, productive conflict processes and outcomes, rather than destructive ones. Yet, there is the 5% and they are very important. I think this chapter presents, in summary form, the best current approach to understanding and transforming intractable conflicts; a much fuller presentations is available in Coleman’s (2011) book. Over the course of my career, I have, without labeling it as such, written about intractable conflict. In my 1973 book, The Resolution of Conflict, as well as in my 2006 article “A Framework for Thinking about Oppression and its Change,” there is considerable relevant thought. My approach lacked the systematic character and thoroughness of the approach in Rethinking Intractable Conflict. However, being less abstract, it has more psychological detail; some of which is quite relevant to how positive and negative attractors develop and how they might be transformed.

References Azar, E. E. (1990). The management of protracted social conflict. Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishing. Bar-Tal, D. (2000). From intractable conflict through conflict resolution to reconciliation: Psychological analysis. Political Psychology, 21, 351–366. Bartoli, A., Bui-Wrzosinska, L., & Nowak, A. (in press). Peace is in movement: A dynamicalsystems perspective on the emergence of peace in Mozambique. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology.

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Chapter 5

Justice and Conflict Morton Deutsch

“That’s not fair” expresses a feeling that frequently leads to conflict. A younger brother cries out that his older brother is getting “a bigger piece of cake than I am.” An applicant for a job feels that the selection procedures are biased against members of her race, gender, or ethnic group. A politician thinks the election was lost because his opponent stuffed the ballot boxes. A wife feels that her husband doesn’t help sufficiently with the household chores. These all involve issues of justice, which may give rise to conflict. Conflict can lead to changes that reduce injustice; or it can increase injustice if it takes a destructive form, as in war. It is useful to make a distinction between injustice and oppression. Oppression is the experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve the legal system (as in slavery, apartheid, or the lack of right to vote) nor violent (as in tyrannical societies). Harvey (1999) has used the term “civilized oppression” to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life. Civilized oppression “is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules. It refers to the vast and deep injustices some groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions which are supported by the media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms” (Young, 1990, p. 41). Structural oppression cannot be eliminated by getting rid of the rulers or by making some new laws, because oppressions are systematically reproduced in the major economic, political and cultural institutions. While specific privileged groups are the beneficiaries of the oppression of other groups, and thus have an interest in the continuation of the status quo, they do not typically understand themselves to be agents of oppression (see Deutsch, 2006, for a fuller discussion on oppression).

Deutsch, M. (2006). Justice and conflict. In M. Deutsch, P. T. Coleman, & E. C. Marcus (Eds.), The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and practice (43–68). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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What Forms Does Injustice Take? I consider here six types of injustices that are involved in oppression: distributive injustice, procedural injustice, the sense of injustice, retributive injustice, moral exclusion, and cultural imperialism. To identify which groups of people are oppressed and what forms their oppression takes, each of these six types of injustices should be examined. For a comprehensive discussion of social psychological research related to the topics discussed below, see Tyler, Boeckmann, Smith, & Huo (1997).

Types of Injustice In the scholarly literature on injustice, there are several foci of attention: • Distributive injustice, which is concerned with the criteria that lead you to feel you receive a fair outcome (the boy receives a fair share of the pie being distributed). • Procedural injustice, concerned with fair treatment in making and implementing the decisions that determine the outcome. (Is the politician being treated with dignity and respect? Has he lost the election fairly?) • A sense of injustice, centering on what factors determine whether an injustice is experienced as such. (If the wife does more than her fair share of the household chores, what will determine whether or not she feels it is unjust?) • Retributive and reparative injustice, concerned with how to respond to the violation of moral norms and how to repair the moral community that has been violated (for example, in the case of job discrimination against an applicant because of race). • Moral exclusion or the scope of injustice, concerned with who is included in the moral community and who is thought to be entitled to fair outcomes and fair treatments. Generally, you don’t include such creatures as ticks and roaches in your moral community—and some people think of other ethnic groups, heretics, or those with differing sexual orientation as “vermin” who are not entitled to justice. • Cultural imperialism occurs when a dominant group imposes its values, norms, and customs upon subordinated groups so that members of these subordinated groups find themselves defined by the dominant others. To the extent that women, Africans, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, the elderly, etc., must interact with the dominant group whose culture mainly provides stereotyped images of them, they are often under pressure to conform to and internalize the dominant group images of their group. I discuss each focus separately in this chapter. Recognize, though, that there is considerable overlap among them.

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Distributive Justice Issues of distributive justice pervade social life. They occur not only at the societal level but also in intimate social relations. They arise when something of value is scarce and not everyone can have what they want, or when something of negative value (a cost, a harm) cannot be avoided by all. In the schools, such questions arise in connection with who gets the teacher’s attention, who gets what marks, and how much of a school’s resources are to be allocated for students who are physically handicapped or socioeconomically disadvantaged. Similarly, distribution of pay, promotion, benefits, equipment, space, and so forth are common problems in work settings. Also, issues of distributive justice are involved in health care and medical practice: How is a scarce or expensive medical resource, such as a mechanical heart, to be allocated? Scholars have identified a large number of principles that could be used in distributing grades, pay, scarce medical resources, and the like. Discussions focus on three key principles—equity, equality, and need—and their variants. The equity principle asserts that people should receive benefits in proportion to their contribution; those who contribute more should receive more than those who contribute less. The equality principle states that all members of a group should share its benefits equally. The need principle indicates that those who need more of a benefit should get more than those who need it less. In any particular allocation situation, the three principles may be in conflict. Thus, paying the members of a workgroup according to their individual productivity may conflict with paying all the members of a work group equally, and these two principles may conflict with paying them according to their need (such as giving higher pay to those with more dependents). Only if all are equally productive and equally needy is there no conflict among the principles. The principles of distributive justice may be favored differently among individuals, groups, social classes, ideologies, and so forth. For example, in a collectivist community such as an Israeli kibbutz, the members have essentially the same pay and standard of living no matter how much they differ in their individual work productivity. In contrast, in an individualistic society such as the United States, the CEO of a profit-making firm may get paid more than a thousand times what an individual worker makes. Conflict within the kibbutz arises if an individual feels that his standard of living doesn’t adequately reflect his unusually valuable contribution to the community; conflict within the American firm is likely if workers feel that they are not getting a fair share of the profits. Theory and research (Deutsch, 1985) suggest that the principles are usually salient in different social contexts. Equity is most prominent in situations in which economic productivity is the primary goal; equality is dominant when social harmony, cohesiveness, or fostering enjoyable social relations is the primary emphasis; and need is most salient in situations where encouraging personal development and personal welfare is the major goal. Many times, all three goals are important. In such situations, the three principles can be applied in a manner that is either mutually supportive or mutually

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contradictory. In a mutually supportive application, the equity principle leads to recognizing individual differences in contribution and honoring those who make uniquely important contributions. In a socially harmonious honoring, no invidious distinctions are drawn between those who are honored and those who are not; the equal divine or moral value of everyone in the cooperative community is affirmed as the community honors those who give so much to it. Similarly, the equal moral worth of every individual leads to special help for those who are especially needy. Thus, if a football player helps his team win by an unusually skillful or courageous feat, he is honored by his teammates and others in such a way that they feel good rather than demeaned by his being honored. His being honored does not imply that they have lost something; it is not a win-lose or competitive situation for them. If, in contrast, the equity principle is applied in a manner that suggests those who produce more are better human beings and entitled to superior treatment generally, then social harmony and cohesiveness are impaired. If the equality principle leads to a sameness or uniformity in which the value of unique individual contributions is denied, then productivity as well as social cohesion is impaired. It is a delicate balance that often tilts too far in one direction or the other. The judgment that you have received a fair outcome is determined not only by whether the appropriate distributive principles are employed but also by whether your outcome is in comparative balance with the outcomes received by people like you in similar situations. If you and a coworker are equally productive, do you each receive the same pay raise? Are all members of a club invited to a party given by the club leader? If it’s my turn to receive a heart transplant, is someone else—maybe a wealthy benefactor of the hospital—given higher priority? The theory of relative deprivation indicates that the sense of deprivation or injustice arises if there is comparative imbalance: egoistical deprivation occurs if an individual feels disadvantaged relative to other individuals, and fraternal deprivation occurs if a person feels her group is disadvantaged relative to other groups. The sense of being deprived occurs if there is a perceived discrepancy between what a person obtains, of what she wants, and what she believes she is entitled to obtain. The deprivation is relative because one’s sense of deprivation is largely determined by past and current comparisons with others as well as by future expectations. There is an extensive literature on the determinants of the choice of other individuals or groups with whom one chooses to compare oneself. This literature is too extensive to summarize here, but it clearly demonstrates that people’s feelings of deprivation are not simply a function of their objective circumstances; they are affected by a number of psychological variables. Thus, paradoxically, members of disadvantaged groups (such as women, low-paid workers, ethnic minorities) often feel less deprived than one might expect, and even less so than those who are more fortunate, because they compare themselves with “similar others”—other women, other low-paid workers. In contrast, men and middle-income workers who have more opportunities may feel relatively more deprived because they are comparing themselves with those who have enjoyed more success in upward mobility.

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Also, there is evidence that discontent, social unrest, and rebellion often occur after a period of improvement in political-economic conditions that leads to rising expectations regarding entitlements if they are not matched by a corresponding rise in one’s benefits. The result is an increased perceived discrepancy between one’s sense of entitlement and one’s benefits; this is sometimes referred to as “the revolution of rising expectations.”

Procedural Justice In addition to assessing the fairness of outcomes, individuals judge the fairness of the procedures that determine the outcomes. Research evidence indicates that fair treatment and procedures are a more pervasive concern to most people than fair outcomes (see Lind & Tyler, 1988, for a comprehensive discussion of procedural justice). Fair procedures are psychologically important for several reasons, first in encouraging the assumption that they give rise to fair outcomes in the present and also in the future. In some situations, where it is not clear what “fair outcomes” should be, fair procedures are the best guarantee that the decision about outcomes is made fairly. Research indicates that one is less apt to feel committed to authorities, organizations, social policies, and governmental rules and regulations if the procedures associated with them are considered unfair. Also, people feel affirmed if the procedures to which they are subjected treat them with the respect and dignity they feel is their due; if so treated, it is easier for them to accept a disappointing outcome. Questions with regard to the justice of procedures can arise in various ways. Let us consider, for example, evaluation of teacher performance in a school. Some questions immediately come to mind. Who has “voice” or representation in determining whether such evaluation is necessary? How are the evaluations to be conducted? Who conducts them? What is to be evaluated? What kind of information is collected? How is its accuracy and validity ascertained? How are its consistency and reliability determined? What methods of preventing incompetency or bias in collecting and processing information are employed? Who constitutes the groups that organize the evaluations, draw conclusions, make recommendations, and make decisions? What roles do teachers, administrators, parents, students, and outside experts have in the procedures? How are the ethicality, considerateness, and dignity of the process protected? Implicit in these questions are some values with regard to procedural justice. One wants procedures that generate relevant, unbiased, accurate, consistent, reliable, competent, and valid information and decisions as well as polite, dignified, and respectful behavior in carrying out the procedures. Also, voice and representation in the processes and decisions related to the evaluation are considered desirable by those directly affected by the decisions. In effect, fair procedures yield good information for use in the decision-making processes as well as voice in the processes for those affected by them, and considerate treatment as the procedures are being implemented.

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The Sense of Injustice Whether an injustice takes the form of physical abuse, discrimination in employment, sexual harassment, or disrespectful treatment, there will always be some people who are insensitive to the injustice and hence seemingly unaware of it. In what follows, we discuss factors that influence the sense of injustice. Victims and Victimizers. Distributive as well as procedural injustice can advantage some people and groups and disadvantage others. Those who benefit from injustice are, wittingly or unwittingly, often its perpetrators or perpetuators, and they are usually not fully aware of their complicity. Awareness brings with it such unpleasant emotions as guilt, fear of revenge, and sometimes feelings of helplessness with regard to their ability to bring about the social changes necessary to eliminate the injustice. As one might expect, the disadvantaged are more apt to be aware of the injustice. Associated with this awareness are such feelings as anger (outrage, indignation), resentment, humiliation, depression, and sense of helplessness. Positive emotions related to self-esteem, sense of power, and pride are experienced by those who are engaged in effective actions to eliminate injustice, whether they are advantaged or disadvantaged. There seems to be a straightforward explanation for the asymmetry in sensitivity to the injustice of the disadvantaged (the victims) and the advantaged (the victimizers). The victims usually have relatively little power compared to the victimizers; the latter are more likely to set the terms of their relationship and, through their control of the state and other social institutions, to establish the legal and other reigning definitions of justice. Thus, the victimizers—in addition to gains from their exploitative actions— commonly find reassurance in official definitions of justice and the support of such major social institutions as the church, the media, and the schools, to deaden their sensitivity to the injustices inherent in their relations with the victim. The victim may, of course, be taken in by the official definitions and the indoctrination emanating from social institutions and, as a result, lose sensitivity to her situation of injustice. However, the victim is less likely than the victimizer to lose sensitivity to injustice because she is the one who is experiencing its negative consequences. She is also less likely to feel committed to the official definitions and indoctrinations because of her lack of participation in creating them. This explanation of differential sensitivity in terms of differential gains and differential power is not the complete story. There are, of course, relations in which the victimizer is not of superior power; even so, he avoids experiencing guilt for his actions. Consider a traffic accident in which a car hits a pedestrian. The driver of the car usually perceives the accident so as to place responsibility for it on the victim. Seeing the victim as responsible enables the driver to maintain a positive image of himself. Projecting the blame onto the victim enables the victimizer to feel blameless. If we accept the notion that most people try to maintain a positive conception of themselves, we can expect differential sensitivity to injustice in those who experience pain, harm, and misfortune and those who cause it. If I try to think well of

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myself, I shall minimize my responsibility for any injustice that is connected with me, or minimize the extent of injustice that has occurred if I cannot minimize my responsibility. On the other hand, if I am the victim of pain or harm, to think well of myself I have to believe that it was not my due; it is not just desserts for a person of my good character. Thus, the need to maintain positive self-esteem leads to opposite reactions in those who cause an injustice and those who suffer from it. There is, of course, also the possibility that a victim may seek to maintain her self-esteem by denying or minimizing the injustice she is suffering; denial may not be completely conscious. Resort to denial is less apt to occur if there are other similar victims who are prepared to acknowledge and protest their own victimization. Although the need to maintain positive self-regard is common, it is not universal. If she views herself favorably, the victim of injustice may be outraged by her experience and attempt to undo it; in so doing, she may have to challenge the victimizer. If the victimizer is more powerful than she and has the support of legal and other social institutions, she will realize that it is dangerous to act on her outrage—or even to express it. Under such circumstances, in a process that Anna Freud (1937) labeled “identification with the aggressor,” the victim may control her dangerous feelings of injustice and outrage by denying them and by internalizing the derogatory attitudes of the victimizer toward herself as well as toward others who are similar to her (other women, other disadvantaged groups). Paradoxically, by identifying with the aggressor you feel more powerful as you attack or aggress against others on whom you project the “bad” characteristics in yourself that you have suppressed because of your fear of being attacked by someone with the power to harm you. We can see this phenomenon in parents who were abused as children going on to abuse their own children and in traditionally submissive women derogating independent, assertive women. From this discussion, it is evident that for numerous reasons victims as well as their victimizers may be insensitive to injustices that are occurring. I turn now to a brief discussion of how the sense of injustice may be activated in the victim and also the victimizer. (See Deutsch & Steil, 1988, for an extended discussion.) Activating the Sense of Injustice. The process entails falsifying and delegitimating officially sanctioned ideologies, myths, and prejudices that “justify” the injustices. I am referring to such myths as these: • Women like men to make sexual passes at them, even at work, because it makes them feel attractive • African Americans are morally and intellectually inferior to European Americans • The poor deserve to be poor because they are lazy • Everyone in the United States has equal opportunity in the competition to achieve success The activation process also involves exposing the victims and victimizers to new ideologies, models, and reference groups that support realistic hope about the possibility that the injustice can be eliminated. Because of the anxieties they elicit, one can anticipate that the changes necessary to eliminate an injustice produce resistance

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from others—and sometimes in oneself. It is easier to manage resistance and anxiety by becoming aware of the value systems that support the change and of models of successful change as well as of the social support you can get from groups and individuals who support the change. You feel less vulnerable if you know that you are not alone, that others are with you. Additionally, the process entails the work necessary to make oneself and one’s group effective forces for social change. There is internally directed work, aimed at enhancing cohesiveness, trust, and effective organization among those who favor change; and there is external work, involved in building up one’s political and economic strength as well as one’s bargaining power. Doing so enables effective action to increase the incentives for accepting change among the advantaged who are content with the status quo, and among those who desire change but are fearful of the consequences of seeking change. However, some victims of injustice may have to free themselves from the seductive satisfaction of feeling morally superior to the victimizers before they can fully commit to and be effective in their struggle against injustice.

Retributive and Reparative Justice In a study comparing responses to injustice and to frustration (reported in Deutsch, 1985), it was found that an injustice that is experienced, whether to oneself or to another, involves one not only personally but also as a member of a moral community whose moral norms are being violated; it evokes an obligation to restore justice. The psychology of retributive and reparative justice is concerned with the attitudes and behavior of people in response to moral rule breaking. It is reasonable to expect a person’s response to be influenced by the nature of the transgression, the transgressor, the victim, and the amount of harm experienced by the victim, as well as by the person’s relations to the transgressor and victim. A transgression such as murder evokes a different response than violation of customary norms of courtesy and politeness. In the United States, a white murderer is less likely to be executed than a black one. Similarly, beating and raping a black woman is less apt to result in widespread media attention than in the case of a white victim. Burning a synagogue is considered a less serious offense than painting swastikas on its walls. An Israeli Jew is less apt to be concerned about Israeli discrimination against Palestinians than Arabs are, and Arabs are unlikely to be as concerned about discrimination against Jews in their countries as Israeli Jews are. A number of means are employed to support and reestablish the validity of moral rules once they are violated. They generally call for one, or a combination, of these actions on the part of the violator: full confession, sincere apology, contrition, restitution, compensation, self-abasement, or self-reform. They also may involve various actions by the community addressed to the violator, such as humiliation, physical punishment, incarceration, or reeducation. These actions may be addressed not just to the violator but also to others related to the violator, such as his children, family, or ethnic group.

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Retribution can serve a number of functions: • Violation of a moral code tends to weaken the code; one of the most important functions of retribution is to reassert the continuing strength and validity of the moral rule that has been violated. For example, many communities are experiencing a breakdown of the rules of courtesy and respect because children and adolescents are no longer taught these rules and there is no appropriate response when they are violated. • Retribution can also serve a cathartic function for members of the moral community who have been affronted and angered by the transgression. • Punishment of the violator may have a deterrent effect against future violation as well as a cathartic effect. • Retribution may take the form of compulsory reeducation and reform of the transgressor so that he is no longer likely to engage in immoral behavior. • Retribution in the form of restitution, in addition to its other functions, may serve to help the victim recover from the losses and damages that he or she has suffered. There are considerable variations among cultures and subcultures with regard to both the nature of moral rules and how to respond to violations of them. Ignorance with regard to the moral rules of another culture as well as ethnocentrism are likely to give rise to misunderstanding as well as conflict if one violates the moral code of the other group.

The Scope of Justice The scope of justice refers to who (and what) is included in one’s moral community. Who is and is not entitled to fair outcomes and fair treatment by inclusion or lack of inclusion in one’s moral community? Albert Schweitzer included all living creatures in his moral community, and some Buddhists include all of nature. Most of us define a more limited moral community. Individuals and groups who are outside the boundary in which considerations of fairness apply may be treated in ways that would be considered immoral if people within the boundary were so treated. Consider the situation in Bosnia. Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats in Bosnia were more or less part of one moral community and treated one another with some degree of civility. After the start of civil strife (initiated by power-hungry political leaders), vilification of other ethnic groups became a political tool, and it led to excluding others from one’s moral community. As a consequence, the various ethnic groups committed the most barbaric atrocities against one another. The same thing happened with the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi. At various periods in history and in different societies, groups and individuals have been treated inhumanly by other humans: slaves by their masters, natives by colonialists, blacks by whites, Jews by Nazis, women by men, children by

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adults, the physically disabled by those who are not, homosexuals by heterosexuals, political dissidents by political authorities, and one ethnic or religious group by another. Lesser forms of moral exclusions, marginalization, occur also against whole categories of people—women, the physically impaired, the elderly, and various ethnic, religious and racial groups—in many societies where barriers prevent them from full participation in the political, economic, and social life of their societies. The results of these barriers are not only material deprivation but also disrespectful, demeaning, and arbitrary treatment as well as decreased opportunity to develop and employ their individual talents. For extensive research and writing in this area, see the work of Susan Opotow (2001), a leading scholar. Three central psychological questions arise with regard to moral exclusion: 1. What social conditions lead an individual or group to exclude others from the individual or group’s moral community? 2. What psychological mechanisms enable otherwise moral human beings to commit atrocities against other human beings? 3. What determines which individuals or groups are likely to be excluded from the moral community? Existing knowledge to answer these questions adequately is limited; their seriousness deserves fuller answers than space allows here. Social Conditions. Studies of political, ethnic, and religious violence have identified several social conditions that appear particularly conducive to developing or intensifying hatred and alienating emotions that permit otherwise nonviolent members of a society to dehumanize victims and kill (Gurr, 1970; Staub, 1989). The first of these conditions is emergence of, or increase in, difficult life conditions, with a corresponding increase in the sense of relative deprivation. This may happen as a result of defeat in war, economic depression, rapid social change, or even physical calamity. The resulting decrease in living standards often leads to a sense of insecurity and a feeling of being threatened by potential rivals for scarce jobs, housing, and the like. The second condition is an unstable political regime whose power may be under challenge. In such situations, scapegoating may be employed by those in power as a means of deflecting criticism and of attacking potential dissidents and rivals. Third, there may be a claim for superiority—national, racial, gender, class, cultural, religious, genetic—that justifies treating the other as having inferior moral status. The fourth condition is when violence is culturally salient and sanctioned as a result of past wars, attention in the media, or availability of weapons. Fifth, there may be little sense of human relatedness or social bonding with the potential victims because there is little in the way of cooperative human contact with them. The sixth condition is social institutions that are authoritarian; there, nonconformity and open dissent against violence sanctioned by authority are inhibited.

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Finally, hatred and violence are intensified if there is no active group of observers of the violence, in or outside the society, who strongly object to it and serve as a constant reminder of its injustice and immorality. Psychological Mechanisms. There are many mechanisms by which reprehensible behavior toward another can be justified. One can do so by appealing to a higher moral value (killing physicians who perform abortions to discourage abortion and “save unborn children”). Or one can rationalize by relabeling the behavior (calling physical abuse of a child “teaching him a lesson”). Or one can minimize the behavior by saying it is not so harmful (“it hurts me more than it does you”). Or one can deny personal responsibility for the behavior (your superior has ordered you to torture the prisoner). Or one can blame the victim (it is because they are hiding the terrorists in their village that the village must be destroyed). Or one can isolate oneself emotionally or desensitize oneself to the human consequences of delegitimating the others (as many do in relation to beggars and homeless people in urban areas). Selection of Targets for Exclusion. We are most likely to delegitimate others whom we sense as a threat—to anything that is important to us: our religious beliefs, economic well-being, public order, sense of reality, physical safety, reputation, ethnic group, family, moral values, institutions, and so on. If harm by the other was experienced in the past, we are apt to be increasingly ready to interpret ambiguous actions of the other as threats. A history of prior violent ethnic conflict predisposes a group to be suspicious of another’s intentions. We also delegitimate others whom we exploit, take advantage of, or otherwise treat unfairly because of their deviance from normative standards of appearance or behavior. However, as indicated earlier in this chapter, there is an asymmetry such that the ability to exclude the other is more available to the powerful as compared to the weak; the powerful can do this overtly, the weak only covertly. Thus, the targets for exclusion are likely to be those with relatively little power, such as minority groups, the poor, and “sexual deviants.” Sometimes suppressed inner conflicts encourage individuals or groups to seek out external enemies. There are many kinds of internal needs for which a hostile external relationship can be an outlet: • It may amount to an acceptable excuse for internal problems; the problems can be held out as caused by the adversary or by the need to defend against the adversary. • It may be a distraction so that internal problems appear less salient. • It can provide an opportunity to express pent-up hostility arising from internal conflict through combat with the external adversary. • It may enable one to project disapproved aspects of oneself (which are not consciously recognized) onto the adversary and to attack those aspects through assault on the adversary. The general tendency is to select for projection those who are weaker, those with whom there is a prior history of enmity, and those who symbolically represent the weaker side of the internal conflict. Thus, someone who has repressed his homosexual tendencies, fearing socially dangerous consequences for acting on them, may make homosexuals into an enemy group. • Especially if it has dangerous undertones, conflict can serve to counteract such personal feelings as aimlessness, boredom, lack of focus, lack of energy, and

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depression. It can give a sense of excitement, purpose, coherence, and unity as well as energize and mobilize oneself for struggle. It can be an addictive stimulant masking underlying depression. • It may permit important parts of oneself—including attitudes, skills, and defenses developed during conflictual relations in one’s formative stages—to be expressed and valued because relations with the present adversary resemble earlier conflictual relations.

Cultural Imperialism “Cultural imperialism involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture and establishing it as the norm” (Young, 1990, p. 59). Those living under cultural imperialism find themselves defined by the dominant others. As Young (op. cit) points out: “Consequently, the differences of women from men, American Indians or Africans from Europeans, Jews from Christians, become reconstructed as deviance and inferiority.” Culturally dominated groups often experience themselves as having a double identity, one defined by the dominant group and the other coming from membership in one’s own group. Thus, in my childhood, adult African-American men were often called “boy” by members of the dominant white groups but within their own group, they might be respected ministers and wage earners. Culturally subordinated groups are often able to maintain their own culture because they are segregated from the dominant group and have many interactions within their own group, which are invisible to the dominant group. In such contexts, the subordinated culture commonly reacts to the dominant culture with mockery and hostility fueled by their sense of injustice and of victimization.

Implications for Understanding Conflict There are several interrelated implications for conflict in this discussion. First of all, as indicated at the beginning of this chapter, perceived injustice is a frequent source of conflict. Second, if the processes or outcomes of a conflict are perceived to be unjust, the resolution of a conflict is likely to be unstable and give rise to further conflict. Third, conflict may exist about what is “just.” Fourth, paradoxically, justifying as a negotiation technique—that is, blaming the other for an injustice and claiming special privilege because of the injury one has presumably suffered—is apt to lead to conflict escalation unless the other agrees that she has been unjust and takes responsibility for remedying it. “Blaming” tends to be inflaming.

Injustice as the Source of Conflict A paradigmatic example of procedural as well as distributive injustice is two people who have to share something to which each is equally entitled (found cash, space, equipment, inherited property) and the one who gets at it first takes what he wants

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of it and leaves the remainder (a smaller or less valuable portion) to the other. Thus, if two children have to share a piece of cake and the one who divides it into two portions takes the larger one, then the other child is likely to get mad. If he is not afraid of the other, he may challenge the unfair division and try to restore equality. If he is afraid, he may be unwilling to admit to himself the injustice, but if he does he will be resentful and try to get even covertly. Thus, conflict continues even though the episode ends. There is a clear procedural way to avoid this sort of injustice (see also the later section, “Inventing Solutions”), in which the person who divides the cake (or whatever) does not get first choice with regard to his portion of the division. There is also final-offer arbitration, a form sometimes employed when the parties cannot resolve conflict by themselves. It is based on a similar notion, namely, creating an incentive for making fair offers. Each party to a conflict agrees to binding arbitration and secretly informs the arbitrator of his or her last and best offer for an agreement; the arbitrator then selects the one that is the fairest. Suppose two ethnic groups in a country are in conflict over how many representatives they each allocate in the national parliament. One group wants to make the allocations in terms of the proportion of each ethnic group in the population; the other group wants to do it in terms of the proportion of the territory occupied by each ethnic population. Ethnic group A, which has fewer people but more land, makes its final offer a bicameral legislature in which one legislative body would be elected by per capita vote and the other in proportion to the size of the territory. Ethnic group B makes a final offer of a simple legislative body based on per capita vote.

Injustice in the Course of Conflict Unfair procedures employed in resolving conflict undermine confidence in the institutions that establish and implement the policies and rules regulating conflict. Thus, people become alienated from political institutions if they feel that elections are not conducted fairly, or that their interests are ignored and they have no voice in affecting social policies and how they are implemented, or that they are discriminated against such that they are apt to be the losers in any political conflict. Similarly, people lose confidence in legal and judicial institutions and third-party procedures such as mediation and arbitration if the police, judges, and other third parties are biased, if they are not treated courteously, if competent legal representation is not available to them, or if they have little opportunity to express their concerns. Trust in organizations and groups as well as in interpersonal relations is also undermined if, when conflict occurs, one is abused, not given opportunity to voice one’s concerns and views, treated as an inferior whose rights and interests have legitimacy only as they are bestowed by others, or otherwise not respected as a person. Alienation and withdrawal of commitment, of course, are not the only possible forms of response to unjust processes of conflict resolution. Anger, aggression,

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rebellion, sabotage, and similarly assertive attempts to remove the injustice are some other forms of response. Depending on the perceived possibilities, one may become openly or covertly active in attempting to change the institutions, relations, and situations giving rise to the injustice. Conflict is central in the functioning of all institutions and relations. If the processes involved in conflict resolution are unfair, pressures to bring about change arise; they may take a violent form if there are no socially recognized and available procedures for dealing with grievances.

Conflict About What Is Just Many conflicts are about which principle of justice should be applied or how a given principle should be implemented. Thus, disputes about affirmative action often center on whether students (or employees) should be selected on the basis of individual relative merit as measured by test scores, academic grades, and prior work experience, or selected so as to reflect racial and ethnic diversity in the population. Each principle, in isolation, can be considered to be just. However, selection by the criterion of relative merit as measured by test score and grades often means that ethnic diversity is limited. Selection so as to achieve ethnic diversity frequently means that some individuals, from the majority group, with higher relative standing on tests, are not selected even as some minority group members with lower standing are. These results are possible even when only well-qualified applicants are chosen. Conflict over affirmative action may not only be about principles of justice; it also concerns the justness of the procedures for measuring merit. Some claim that the standard measures of merit—tests, grades, prior work experience—are biased against individuals who are not from the dominant culture. Others assert that the measures are appropriate since selection is for performance in a setting—a college or workplace—that reflects the dominant culture. The BTC-SBM conflict described in the preceding chapter is between two principles of justice. Should teacher representatives on the school council be selected to represent their academic department by vote of the members of the academic department? Or should they be selected to represent their academic departments but also chosen to represent the ethnic diversity of the teachers? In dealing with conflict between reasonable principles of justice, it is well to apply the notions advanced in the previous chapter. Specifically, you want to turn the conflict into a win-win one in which it is perceived to be a mutual problem to be resolved cooperatively. In the illustration of affirmative action, there are many ways in which both claims—for diversity and for merit—can be represented in selection policies. It is better to discuss how these two principles can be combined, so that the claims of each can be adequately realized, than to create a win-lose conflict by denying the claims of one side so that the other’s can be victorious.

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“Justifying” as a Negotiation Tactic “Justice” can be employed as a tactical weapon during negotiations to claim higher moral ground for oneself. Doing so claims greater morality for your position as compared to the other’s. This form of justifying commonly has several effects. It hardens your position and makes it inflexible as you become morally committed to it as well as increasingly self-righteous. It leads to blaming the other and implicit denigration of the other as morally inferior. It produces a similar effect in the other and escalates the conflict into a conflict about morality. As this happens, the conflicting parties often lose sight of the actual interests underlying their respective positions and the conflict becomes a win-lose one that is not likely to advance the interests of either side. It is not the justifying or giving reasons for your interests that is harmful but rather the claim of moral superiority, with its explicit or implicit moral denigration of the other. Whatever justifying takes place, it should be in the context of full recognition of one another’s equal moral status.

Implications for Training There are several important implications here for training in constructive conflict resolution. First, knowledge of the intimate connection between conflict and injustice has to be imparted. (This chapter is an introduction to the knowledge in this area.) Second, training should help to enlarge the scope of the student’s moral community so that he perceives that all people are entitled to care and justice. Third, it should help increase the empathic capacity of the student so that he can sense and experience in some measure the injustice that the victims of injustice experience. Fourth, given the nature of the many embittered conflicts between groups that have inflicted grievous harm, we need to develop insight into the processes involved in forgiveness and reconciliation. Finally, training should help to develop skill in inventing productive, conflict-resolving combinations of justice principles when they appear to be in conflict. Many training programs deal in some measure with the first three implications, but few if any deal with the last two. Before turning to a more extended consideration of the latter implications, I briefly consider the first three.

Knowledge of Systematic Forms of Injustice in Society Some injustices are committed by people with full realization that they are acting unjustly. Most are unwitting, as participants in a system—a family, community, social organization, school, workplace, society, or world—in which there are established traditions, structures, procedures, norms, rules, practices, and the like that

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determine how one should act. These traditions, structures, and so on may give rise to profound injustices that are difficult to recognize because they are taken for granted since they are so embedded in a system in which one is thoroughly enmeshed.

Illustrations of Types of Injustice How can we help become aware of systemic injustices? I suggest taking each type of injustice (distributive, procedural, retributive, and morally exclusionary) discussed at the beginning of the chapter and using them to probe the system we wish to examine to heighten awareness of its structural sources of injustice. Illustrations for each type of injustice follow. Distributive Injustice. Every type of system—from a society to a family— distributes benefits, costs, and harms (its reward systems are a reflection of this). One can examine such benefits as income, education, health care, police protection, housing, and water supplies, and such harms as accidents, rapes, physical attacks, sickness, imprisonment, death, and rat bites, and see how they are distributed among categories of people: males versus females, employers versus employees, whites versus blacks, heterosexuals versus homosexuals, police officers versus teachers, adults versus children. Such examination reveals some gross disparities in distribution of one or another benefit or harm received by the categories of people involved. Thus, blacks generally receive fewer benefits and more harm than whites in the United States. In most parts of the world, female children are less likely than male children to receive as much education or inherit parental property, and they are more likely to suffer sexual abuse. Procedural Injustice. Similarly, one can probe a system to determine whether it offers fair procedures to all. Are all categories of people treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by judges, police, teachers, parents, employers, and others in authority? Are some but not others allowed to have voice and representation, as well as adequate information, in the processes and decisions that affect them? Retributive Injustice. Are “crimes” by different categories of people less likely to be viewed as crimes, to result in an arrest, to be brought to trial, to result in conviction, to lead to punishment or imprisonment or the death penalty, and so on? Considerable disparity is apparent between how “robber barons” and ordinary robbers are treated by the criminal-justice system, between manufacturers who knowingly sell injurious products to many (obvious instances being tobacco and defective automobiles) and those who negligently cause an accident. Similarly, almost every comparison of the treatment of black and white criminal offenders indicates that, if there is a difference, blacks receive worse treatment. Moral Exclusion. When a system is under stress, are there differences in how categories of people are treated? Are some people apt to lose their jobs, be excluded from obtaining scarce resources, or be scapegoated and victimized? During periods of economic depression, social upheaval, civil strife, and war, frustrations are often

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channeled to exclude some groups from the treatment normatively expected from others in the same moral community.

Enlarging the Scope of One’s Moral Community Our earlier discussion of the scope of justice suggests several additional, experientially oriented foci for training. A good place to start is to help students become aware of their own social identities: national, racial, ethnic, religious, class, occupational, gender, sexual, age, community, and social circle. Explore what characteristics they attribute to being American, or white, or Catholic, or female, and so on, and what they attribute to other, contrasting identities such as being Muslim or black. Help them recognize which of these identities claim an implicit moral superiority and greater privilege in contrast to other people who have contrasting identities. Have them reverse roles, to assume an identity that is frequently viewed as morally inferior and less entitled to customary rights and privileges. Then act out, subtly but realistically, how they are treated by those who are now assuming the “morally superior and privileged” identity. Such exercises help students become more aware of implicit assumptions about their own identity as well as other relevant contrasting identities, and more sensitive to the psychological effects of considering others to have identities that are morally inferior and less privileged. Intergroup simulations can also be used to give students an experience in which they start developing prejudice, stereotypes, and hostility toward members of other, competing groups—even as the students have full knowledge that they have been randomly assigned to the groups. Many such experiences can be employed to demonstrate how a moral community is broken down, and to illustrate the psychological mechanisms that people employ to justify this hostility toward outgroup members. (Some widely used intergroup simulations are identified in the Recommended Reading section at the end of this chapter.) It is also useful to give students the experience of how their moral community can expand or contract as a function of temporary events. Thus, research has demonstrated that people are apt to react to a stranger with trust after being exposed by radio broadcasts to “good” news about people (such as acts of heroism, altruism, and helpfulness), and with suspicion after “bad” news (such as murder, rape, robbery, assault, and fraud). By helping students become aware of the temporary conditions, inside as well as outside themselves, that affect the scope of their moral community, they gain capacity to resist contracting their moral community under adverse conditions.

Increasing Empathy Empathic concern allows you to sympathetically imagine how someone else feels and put yourself in his or her place. It is a core component of helpful responsiveness to another. It is most readily aroused for people with whom we identify, with those

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we recognize as people who are like ourselves and belong to our moral community. Empathy is inhibited by excluding the other from one’s moral community, by dehumanizing him, and by making him into an enemy or a devil. Empathy stimulates helpfulness and altruism toward those who are in need of help; dehumanization encourages neglect, derogation, or attack. Enlarging one’s moral community increases one’s scope of empathy. However, empathy can occur at different levels. The fullest level contains all of several aspects of empathy: (1) knowing what the other is feeling; (2) feeling in some measure what the other is feeling; (3) understanding why the other is feeling the way she does, including what she wants or fears; and (4) understanding her perspective and frame of reference as well as her world. Empathic responsiveness to another’s concern helps the other feel understood, validated, and cared for. Role playing, role exchanging or role reversal, and guided imagination are three interrelated methods commonly employed in training people to become empathically responsive to others. Role playing involves imagining that you are someone else, seeing the world through his eyes, wanting what he wants, feeling the emotions he feels, and behaving as he would behave in a particular situation or in reaction to someone else’s behavior. Role exchange or role reversal is similar to role playing, except that it involves reversing or exchanging roles with the person with whom you are interacting in a particular situation (as during a conflict). In guided imagination, you help the student take on the role of the other by stimulating the student to imagine and adopt various relevant characteristics (not caricatures) of the role or person that is being enacted, such as how he walks, talks, eats, fantasizes, dresses, and wakes up in the morning.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation After protracted, violent conflicts in which the conflicting parties have inflicted grievous harm (humiliation, destruction of property, torture, assault, rape, murder) on one another, the conflicting parties may still have to live and work together in the same communities. This is often the case in civil wars, ethnic and religious conflicts, gang wars, and even family disputes that have taken a destructive course. Consider the slaughter which has taken place between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi; between blacks and whites in South Africa; between “Bloods” and “Crips” of Los Angeles; and among Serbs, Croats, and Muslims in Bosnia. Is it possible for forgiveness and reconciliation to occur? If so, what fosters these processes? There are many meanings of forgiveness in the extensive and growing literature concerned with this topic. I shall use the term to mean giving up rage, the desire for vengeance, and a grudge toward those who have inflicted grievous harm on you, your loved ones, or the groups with whom you identify. It also implies willingness to accept the other into one’s moral community so that he or she is entitled to care and justice. As Borris (2003) has pointed out, it does not mean you have to forget the evil that has been done, condone it, or abolish punishment for it. However, it

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implies that the punishment should conform to the canons of justice and be directed toward the goal of reforming the harmdoer so that he or she can become a moral participant in the community. There has been rich discussion in the psychological and religious literature of the importance of forgiveness to psychological and spiritual healing as well as to reconciliation (see for example, Minow, 1998, and Shriver, 1995). Forgiveness is, of course, not to be expected in the immediate aftermath of torture, rape, or assault. It is unlikely, as well as psychologically harmful, until one is able to be in touch with the rage, fear, guilt, humiliation, hurt, and pain that has been stored inside. But nursing hate keeps the injury alive and active in the present, instead of permitting it to take its proper place in the past. Doing so consumes psychological resources and energy that is more appropriately directed to the present and future. Although forgiveness of the other may not be necessary for self-healing, it seems to be very helpful, as well as an important ingredient in the process of reconciliation. A well-developed psychological and psychiatric literature deals with posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD), that is, the psychological consequences of having been subjected or exposed to grievous harm, and a growing literature is emerging from workshop experiences centering on forgiveness and reconciliation. These literatures are too extensive and detailed for more than a brief overview of the major ideas here. Treatment of PTSD (Ochberg, 1988; Basoglu, 1992; Foa, Keane, & Friedman, 2000) essentially (1) gives the stressed person a supportive, safe, and secure environment (2) in which he can be helped to reexperience, in a modulated fashion, the vulnerability, helplessness, fear, rage, humiliation, guilt, and other emotions associated with his grievous harm (medication may be useful in limiting the intensity of the emotions being relived), thus (3) helping him identify the past circumstances and contexts in which the harm occurred and distinguish present realities from past realities; (4) helping him understand the reasons for his emotional reactions to the traumatic events and the appropriateness of his reactions; (5) helping him acquire the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and social support that make him less vulnerable and powerless; and (6) helping him develop an everyday life characterized by meaningful, enjoyable, and supportive relations in his family, work, and community. PTSD treatment requires considerable professional education beyond that involved in conflict resolution training. Still, it is well for students of conflict to be aware that exposure to severe injustice can have enduring harmful psychological effects unless the posttraumatic conditions are treated effectively. Forgiveness and reconciliation may be difficult to achieve at more than a superficial level unless the posttraumatic stress is substantially relieved. Even so, it is well to recognize that the processes involved in forgiveness and reconciliation may also play an important role in relieving PTSD. The causal arrow is multidirectional; progress in “forgiveness” or “reconciliation” or posttraumatic stress reduction facilitates progress in the other two. There are two distinct but interrelated approaches to developing forgiveness. One centers on the victim, and the other on the relationship between the victim and the harmdoer. The focus on the victim, in addition to providing some relief from

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PTSD, seeks to help the victim recognize the human qualities common to victim and victimizer. In effect, various methods and exercises are employed to enable the victim to recognize the bad as well as good aspects of herself, that she has “sinful” as well as “divine” capabilities and tendencies. In other words, one helps the victim become aware of herself as a total person—with no need to deny her own fallibility and imperfections—whose lifelong experiences in her family, schools, communities, ethnic and religious groups, and workplaces have played a key role in determining her own personality and behavior. As the victim comes to accept her own moral fallibility, she is likely to accept the fallibility of the harmdoer as well, and to perceive both the good and the bad in the other. Both victims and harmdoers are often quite moral toward those they include in their own moral community but grossly immoral to those excluded. Thus, Adolf Eichmann, who efficiently organized the mass murder of Jews for the Nazis, was considered a good family man. The New England captains of the slave ships, who transported African slaves to the Americas under the most abominable conditions, were often deacons of their local churches. The white settlers of the United States, who took possession of land occupied by native Americans and killed those who resisted, were viewed as courageous and moral within their own communities. Recognition of the good and bad potential in all humans, the self as well as the other, facilitates the victim’s forgiveness of the harmdoer. But it may not be enough. Quite often, forgiveness also requires interaction between the victim and harmdoer to establish the conditions needed for forgiving. This interaction sometimes takes the form of negotiation between the victim and harmdoer. A third party representing the community (such as a mediator or judge) usually facilitates the negotiation and sets the terms if the harmdoer and victim cannot reach an agreement. It is interesting to note that in some European courts, such negotiations are required in criminal cases before the judge sentences the convicted criminal. Obviously, the terms of an agreement for forgiveness vary as a function of the nature and severity of the harm as well as the relationship between the victim and harmdoer. As I have suggested earlier in this chapter, the victim may seek full confession, sincere apology, contrition, restitution, compensation, self-abasement, or self-reform from the harmdoer (for an excellent discussion of apology and other related issues see Lazare, 2004). The victim may also seek some form of punishment and incarceration for the harmdoer. Forgiveness is most likely if the harmdoer and the victim accept the conditions, whatever they may be. Reconciliation goes beyond forgiveness in that it not only accepts the other into one’s moral community but also establishes or reestablishes a positive, cooperative relationship among the individuals and groups estranged by the harms they inflict on one another. Borris (2003) has indicated: “Reconciliation is the end of a process that forgiveness begins” (for excellent discussions of reconciliation process see Nadler, 2003, and Staub, 2005). In Chapter 1, I discussed in detail some of the factors involved in initiating and maintaining cooperative relations; that discussion is relevant to the process of reconciliation. Here, I wish to consider briefly some of the special issues relating to

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establishing cooperative relations after a destructive conflict. Below, I outline a number of basic principles. 1. Mutual security. After a bitter conflict, each side tends to be concerned with its own security, without adequate recognition that neither side can attain security unless the other side also feels secure. Real security requires that both sides have as their goal mutual security. If weapons have been involved in the prior conflict, mutually verifiable disarmament and arms control are important components of mutual security. 2. Mutual respect. Just as true security from physical danger requires mutual cooperation, so does security from psychological harm and humiliation. Each side must treat the other side with the respect, courtesy, politeness, and consideration normatively expected in civil society. Insult, humiliation, and inconsiderateness by one side usually leads to reciprocation by the other and decreased physical and psychological security. 3. Humanization of the other. During bitter conflict, each side tends to dehumanize the other and develop images of the other as an evil enemy. There is much need for both sides to experience one another in everyday contexts as parents, homemakers, schoolchildren, teachers, and merchants, which enables them to see one another as human beings who are more like themselves than not. Problem-solving workshops, along the lines developed by Burton (1969, 1987) and Kelman (1972), are also valuable in overcoming dehumanization of one another. 4. Fair rules for managing conflict. Even if a tentative reconciliation has begun, new conflicts inevitably occur—over the distribution of scarce resources, procedures, values, etc. It is important to anticipate that conflicts will occur and to develop beforehand the fair rules, experts, institutions, and other resources for managing such conflicts constructively and justly. 5. Curbing the extremists on both sides. During a protracted and bitter conflict, each side tends to produce extremists committed to the processes of the destructive conflict as well as to its continuation. Attaining some of their initial goals may be less satisfying than continuing to inflict damage on the other. It is well to recognize that extremists stimulate extremism on both sides. The parties need to cooperate in curbing extremism on their own side and restraining actions that stimulate and justify extremist elements on the other side. 6. Gradual development of mutual trust and cooperation. It takes repeated experience of successful, varied, mutually beneficial cooperation to develop a solid basis for mutual trust between former enemies. In the early stages of reconciliation, when trust is required for cooperation, the former enemies may be willing to trust a third party (who agrees to serve as a monitor, inspector, or guarantor of any cooperative arrangement) but not yet willing to trust one another if there is a risk of the other failing to reciprocate cooperation. Also in the early stages, it is especially important that cooperative endeavors be successful. This requires careful selection of the opportunities and tasks for cooperation so that they are clearly achievable as well as meaningful and significant.

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Inventing Solutions It is helpful in trying to resolve any problem constructively (as with a conflict between principles of justice) to be able to discover or invent alternative solutions that go beyond win-lose outcomes such as selecting the more powerful party’s principle or flipping a coin to determine the winner. Flipping a coin provides equal opportunity to win, but it does not result in satisfactory outcomes for both sides. For simplicity’s sake, let us consider a conflict over possession of a valuable object, say, a rare antique clock bequeathed to two sons who live in separate parts of the world. Each wants the clock and feels equally entitled to it. Unlike the cake in an earlier example, the clock is not physically divisible. However, they could agree to divide possession of the clock so that they share it for equal periods, say, 6 months or 1 year at a time. Another solution is to sell the clock and divide the resulting money equally. Let us assume, though, that the mother’s will has prohibited sale of the clock to anyone else. Here is an alternative: the two sons can bid against one another in an auction, and the higher bidder gets the clock while the other gets half the price of the winner’s bid. The auction can offer open bidding against one another or a closed, single, final bid from each person. Thus, if the winning bid is $5,000, the winner gets the clock but has to pay the other $2,500; each ends up with equally valued outcomes. The winner’s net value is $2,500, but the loser also ends up with $2,500. Another procedure employs a version of the divide-and-choose rule discussed earlier. A pool to be divided between the sons comprises the clock and an amount of money that each son contributes equally to the pool, say, $3,000. One son divides the total pool (the clock and $6,000 in cash) into two bundles of his own devising, declares the contents of the bundles, and lets the other party choose which bundle to take. Thus, if the son who values the clock at $5,000 is the divider, he might put the clock and $500 in one bundle and $5,500 in the other. Doing so ensures that he receives a gross return of $5,500 and a net return of $2,500 ($5,500 minus $3,000), no matter which bundle the other chooses. The chooser can also obtain a net return of $2,500 if he chooses the cash bundle; presumably he would do so if he values the clock at less than $5,000. Such an outcome would be apt to be seen as fair to both sons. The outcome of the divide-and-choose approach as well as the auction procedure seem eminently fair. Both sons win. The one who wants the clock more badly obtains it, while the other gets something of equivalent value. Other win-win procedures can undoubtedly be invented for types of conflict that at first glance seem to allow only win-lose outcomes. (See Bram & Taylor, 1996, for a very useful discussion of developing fair outcomes.) Training, I believe, creates readiness to recognize the possibility that win-win procedures can be discovered or invented. Skill in developing such procedures can be cultivated, I further believe, by showing students illustrations and modeling of this development as well as giving them extensive practice in attempting to create them.

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Conclusion The relationship between conflict and justice is bidirectional. Injustice breeds conflict, and destructive conflict gives rise to injustice. It is well to realize that preventing destructive conflict requires more than training in constructive conflict resolution. It also necessitates reducing the gross injustices that characterize much of our social world at the interpersonal, intergroup, and international levels. Such reduction requires changes in how various institutions of society—political, economic, educational, familial, and religious—function so that they recognize and honor the values underlying constructive conflict resolution, described in the preceding chapter (human equality, shared community, nonviolence, fallibility, and reciprocity). Adherence to these values not only eliminates gross injustices but also reduces the likelihood that conflict itself takes a destructive course and, as a consequence, gives rise to injustice.

References Basoglu, M. (Ed.). (1992). Torture and its consequences: Current treatment approaches. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Borris, E. R. (2003). The healing power of forgiveness. Occasional Paper, Number 10. Arlington, VA: Institute for Multi-track Diplomacy. Bram, S. J., & Taylor, A. D. (1996). Fair division: From cake cutting to dispute resolution. New York: Cambridge University Press. Burton, J. W. (1969). Conflict and communication: The use of controlled communication in international relations. London: Macmillan. Burton, J. W. (1987). Resolving deep rooted conflicts: A handbook. Lanham, MD: University Press of America. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M., & Steil, J. M. (1988). Awakening the sense of injustice. Social Justice Research, 2, 2–23. Foa, E. B., Keane, T. M., & Friedman, M. J. (Eds.). (2000). Effective treatment for PTSD: Practice guidelines from the international society for traumatic stress studies. New York: Guilford Press. Freud, A. (1937). The ego and the mechanisms of defense. London: Hogarth. Gurr, T. R. (1970). Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harvey, J. (1999). Civilized oppression. Lanham, MD: Lowman and Littlefirld Publishers. Kelman, H. C. (1972). The problem-solving workshop in conflict resolution. In R. L. Merritt (Ed.), Communication in international politics. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Lazare, A. (2004). On apology. New York: Oxford University Press. Minow, M. (1998). Between vengeance and forgiveness: South Africa’s truth and reconciliation commission. Negotiation Journal, 14, 319–356. Nadler, A. (2003). Post-resolution processes: On instrumental and socio-emotional routes to reconciliation. In G. Salomon & B. Nevo (Eds.), Peace education worldwide: The concept, underlying principles, and research. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Ochberg, F. (1988). Post-traumatic therapy and victims of violence. New York: Brunner/Mazel. Shriver, D. W., Jr. (1995). An ethic for enemies: Forgiveness in politics. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Staub, E. (1989). The roots of evil: The origins of genocide and other group violence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Staub, E. (2005). Constructive rather than harmful, forgiveness, reconciliation and ways to promote them after genocide and mass killing. In R. Worthington (Ed.), Handbook of forgiveness (pp. 443–460). New York: Bruner-Mazel. Young, M. I. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Recommended Reading Crosby, F. (1982). Relative deprivation and working women. New York: Oxford University Press. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Gurr, T. R. (1970). Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum. Opotow, S. (Ed.). (1990). Moral exclusion and injustice. Journal of Social Issues, 46(special issue). Schulman, M., & Meckler, E. (1985). Bringing up a moral child: A new approach for teaching your child to be kind, just, and responsible. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Tyler, T. R., Boeckmann, R. J., Smith, H. J., & Huo, Y. J. (1997). Social justice in a diverse society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Chapter 6

Studying Injustice in the Macro and Micro Spheres: Four Generations of Social Psychological Research Sara I. McClelland and Susan Opotow

Introduction This chapter examines the theoretical development and application of justice research in three generations of psychologists trained in the Lewinian mode of psychological research: Morton Deutsch, a student of Kurt Lewin’s while at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Susan Opotow, a student of Deutsch’s while at Teachers College, Columbia University; and Sara I. McClelland, a student of Opotow’s while at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Within each of these scholars’ work – and in the links that connect them – we see how justice theories shift and expand when applied to a range of situations and across levels of analysis. Moving between macro-level structures and micro-level relationships, we explore nuances of justice research models and discover new aspects of justice theories. This close genealogical read begins with Lewin’s interest in shaping and changing social norms, particularly norms that may be unfair but have come to be seen as inevitable, fair, and individually chosen. Lewin’s interest in how injustice can be experienced, yet, at the same time, normalized and unacknowledged, remains a compelling and contemporary topic. All four scholars – Lewin, Deutsch, Opotow, and McClelland – share an interest in how injustice shapes the everyday experience of individuals and groups. While focused on the scholarly lineage connecting these four scholars, we recognize that others are doing similar work. Lewin’s ideas have traveled many routes and have inspired a variety of compelling research strategies. We are grateful for the many kindred scholars doing exciting social justice research from this Lewinian lineage. To mention just a few notable scholars working within this tradition: Michelle Fine’s work on disparities in educational opportunities across race and class (Fine, 1991; Fine et al., 2004) and participatory action research studies with women in prison (Fine et al., 2003; Fine & Torre, 2006); Janice

S.I. McClelland (B) Psychology and Women’s Studies, Michigan Society of Fellows, University of Michigan, 530 Church St., Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA e-mail: [email protected]

119 P.T. Coleman (ed.), Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice, Peace Psychology Book C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8_6, 

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Steil’s work on power, intimacy, entitlement, relationships (1994, 1997, 2001); and Francine Deutsch’s work on gender equity at home, in the labor market, and its effects on women’s well-being (1999). We also mention Julie Blackman’s (1989) work on violence and Jeffrey Z. Rubin’s (Rubin & Levinger, 1995) on levels of analysis. These scholars, all students of Morton Deutsch, exemplify the breadth and depth of scholarship that have emerged from the Lewinian tradition and Morton Deutsch’s mentorship. In this chapter we narrow our focus on the Lewin-Deutsch-Opotow-McClelland lineage to explore how academic ideas emerge, flourish, and change as sociopolitical conditions evoke and extend earlier theories. In the spirit of research on the study of lives (McAdams, 2001; Ouellette & Frost, 2006) we trace the development of scholarship linked by mentorship, a shared focus on the role of injustice in the everyday, and the role that psychology can play in reversing injustice. The four of us are linked by academic lineage, but also by the socio-political conditions of our lives. Bourdieu (1977) has argued that a crisis is often required to break the taken for granted structure of norms. This “exogenous shock” reveals the arbitrariness of social divisions that persist all around us. With this in mind, we note that a shared reality cuts across our lives over the course of the past century. We each began our graduate training during times of international stress, conflict, and moral exclusion. Born in 1890, Lewin was a Jew who moved from Poland to Berlin with his family when he was 15. He completed his dissertation in 1914 with Carl Stumpf and, until 1933, was associated with Gestalt Psychology at the Institute for Social Research in Germany. In the period leading up to World War II when the National Socialist Party (“Nazi”) gained power, Lewin faced extreme prejudice, resulting in his emigration to the United States in 1933. Deutsch describes his start in social psychology in relationship to World War II: “I got involved in graduate work shortly after the [atomic] bomb exploded, I . . . turned to the theoretical analysis of what I thought were basic social relations that relate to war and peace” (Roe, Wessells, & McKay, 2006, p. 312). Opotow’s personal and academic roots were in the aftermath of WWII and the Vietnam War. Perhaps not coincidentally, McClelland began her graduate training in 2003, the same year that the Second Gulf War began. Three wars over a 60 year period loosely tie these four lives together, but perhaps more important than the wars themselves is the recognition that contemporary socio-political events influence the lives and interests of academics – particularly those that go on to study prejudice, inequality, and injustice. In our scholarship we have taken up questions of conflict and fairness with an eye towards the ways that injustice becomes normalized and conditions of inequity come to be described as natural. We each focus on macro and micro contexts to examine how the naturalization and denaturalization of injustice travels between these contexts. At this intersection, research methods and theory become increasingly important tools to de-naturalize injustice, but these tools must also be continually examined for their limitations and the assumptions they import into the research environment. To explore the links that have emerged from the Lewinian lineage, this chapter explores two central questions about conducting justice research. First, when considering distributive justice and especially the fair distribution of resources, how do

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we define fair? Second, what are the strengths and limits of the distributive justice paradigm as it moves among smaller and larger social units? We explore these questions by examining how the distributive justice paradigm has been interpreted in psychological research, how Deutsch’s ideas have been translated into innovative research designs, and the challenges that face researchers working in this area. Using a recent empirical example of using a justice framework to study intimate relationships (McClelland, 2010, in press), we explore how these ideas have been instrumental in forming new research questions and, of course, new challenges that accompany these questions. We look simultaneously at the history and future of justice research to emphasize the power of theorizing and studying issues of structural injustice across societal, group, familial, and intimate levels of analysis.

Kurt Lewin: How Individuals and Groups Come to View Their World Lewin is often described as the father of social psychology, but he also was influential in the development of the field of justice research. His book, Resolving Social Conflicts (Lewin, 1948) contains many theoretical essays related to conflict, justice, and prejudice. When considering the role of injustice, Lewin was interested in examining how experiences of injustice affected both individuals and groups. In defining the “life space” (p. 868) Lewin (1939) was interested in subjective experience of individuals, but he was also interested in how the objective environment interacted with the person to create that subjective experience. In his posthumously published essay “Everything within me rebels” (1933/1986) (written in Berlin but never sent to Wolfgang Kohler because the safety of sender and receiver could have been compromised), Lewin described what life was like for Jewish children living in Germany during the early 20th century. In this short essay, Lewin keenly observed individual, group, and nationalistic psychological experiences – all within small acts of injustice that had become mundane, expected, and relentless. He wrote, Quite suddenly and without any kind of predictable cause, [children] have been beaten up and treated with contempt. Whether instigated by teachers, by students, or simply by people in the street, these recurring experiences pull the ground out from under the feet of the young child, and cut off all possibility of objective discussion or unbiased evaluation . . . Thus, the effects are ever present (p. 42).

Lewin’s observations about the effects of recurring and ever present, violently enacted prejudice foreshadow his research on how interior and exterior effects of prejudice interact. This short quote is conceptually rich and highlights Lewin’s attention to the role of groups (teachers, students, people on the street), the role of social attitudes (contempt, bias), and the negative effects on the individual – both in terms of the physical body and their psychological well-being. Like many Jewish émigrés of his generation, Lewin was concerned with pressing social problems that

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demanded attention and solutions. This led him to develop and encourage participatory action research in concert with field studies, research in naturalistic settings, and research with applicable outcomes. His work pioneered the use of social action groups as an approach to social justice research; he believed that such an approach could foster the development of socially-relevant theory and guide action (Lewin, 1948). Lewin believed that individual and group behaviors could not be explained without a parallel understanding of how individuals and groups come to view the world in which they live. Lewin was an early advocate for group-level research and argued that groups experienced norms and patterns that were not simply reducible to the individuals within the group (Sarup, 1975). Deutsch (1954) provided important commentary that explained what this perspective meant within the discipline of psychology: It is well to recognize that Lewin’s first writings in the area of group dynamics . . . occurred at a time when psychologists commonly denied the existence of “groups.” Only “individuals” were real, and to refer to characteristics of groups – e.g., “group atmosphere,” “group goals,” etc. – was viewed as being “nonscientific” or “mystical.” One of Lewin’s major contributions was to help [make] the concept of group acceptable to psychologists, that is, to lead psychologists to accept the notion that groups, per se, have characteristics (pp. 213–214, cited in Sarup, 1975, p. 760).

Lewin’s interest in groups extended to all types and sizes of groups. One example of a group he examined at length was the marital dyad in his chapter, “The background of conflict in marriage” (1948). This early interest in dyadic relationships helped to launch research on inter-personal relationships in social psychology (e.g., Berscheid & Peplau, 1983; see Gilbert, Fiske, & Lindzey, 1998). Lewin’s interest in the marital dyad was two-fold: he theorized this unit as a space where individuals had their basic needs met (or not) and as a space where individuals struggled with issues of conflict and conflict resolution. In terms of needs, Lewin focused on those needs that were particular to the intimate dyad – sexual needs – and negotiation about how sexual needs were to be met within the relational unit. Foreshadowing McClelland’s later research on sexual expectations, in the following quote he touches on a number of related concepts when discussing sexual desire, including conflict, adaptation, balance, and satisfaction: Sexual desire and disgust are closely related, and one may quickly turn into the other with the change of sexual hunger to satiation or oversatiation . . . All of these factors may lead to more or less difficult conflicts, and they imply the necessity of mutual adaptation. If within this realm no balance can be found which will give sufficient satisfaction to both partners, it will be difficult to keep the marriage intact (Lewin, 1940/1948, pp. 92–93).

Lewin’s work on the marital unit is an early example of using a dyad as a space to theorize intergroup relations within a smaller unit of analysis. This interest in connecting experiences in the intimate space with those in the socio-political arena compellingly connects with Deutsch’s work on the marital dyad (e.g., Kressel, Lopez-Morillas, Weinglass, & Deutsch, 1979), Opotow’s work on the scope of justice as it plays out in interpersonal conflicts (1995) and on the bodies of those excluded (2011), and McClelland’s (2010, in press) work on sexual satisfaction in diverse types of intimate couples. This shared line of research demonstrates an

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interest in exploring justice questions within smaller units of social relations as a means to examine conflict, justice, and satisfaction – with an eye towards observing how these concerns about injustice travel bi-directionally between smaller social units and larger social institutions. In Lewin’s work on groups of all sizes we see the genesis for these questions as well as the language to imagine how the social can be very large and very small – even intimate – but essential to study no matter the size.

Key Justice Concepts Before continuing, we briefly define the two constructs that relate to the work of each researcher: distribution of resources and levels of analysis. While these terms are not usually associated with Lewin (as compared to terms such as field theory and life space), we briefly explore their Lewinian roots and how they have been more explicitly addressed in subsequent research.

Distribution of Resources Distributive justice is concerned with social justice in the distribution of the physiological, economic, and social conditions, as well as goods that affect individual well-being (Deutsch, 1985). It focuses on the attainment of parity in the distribution of societal goods and harms. Uriel Foa and Edna Foa’s (1974) seminal work on resource distribution makes a valuable and foundational contribution to distributive justice research. Their model, which offers a useful heuristic for understanding the many kinds of goods that people need, distribute, and withhold, identifies six fundamental resources: love, service, goods, money, information, and status. Foa and Foa argue that the giving and taking of resources within each of these six categories occurs within all types of settings and relationships – ranging from the interpersonal, to the intergroup, institutional, and societal. In Foa and Foa’s model, each of the six resources (love, service, goods, money, information, and status) has its own characteristics, rules, and relationship to power. For example, “exchanges of love, unlike economic transactions, someone’s profit does not have to be another’s loss” (p. 200). In their model, each resource is governed by a set of rules or laws that define their “proper” exchange, specifically laws governing expected kinds of social exchange that occur within particular social roles (also see Walzer, 1983). By more closely examining how researchers have taken up resources identified by Foa and Foa, we can see how various resource types and the rules that govern their exchange offer insight into theories of distributive justice.

Levels of Analysis Lewin’s work on the psychology of social dynamics ushered in a new framework for how researchers could conceptualize the person, the group, and interactions within social contexts. A model of psychology that included more than just the individual

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significantly changed the way that researchers asked questions and the types of data they collected. It offered theories that became useful and relevant to describe the social person and the psychological dynamics observed in groups and social institutions. Inherent in Lewin’s work is the idea that researchers must attend to levels of analysis. This concept of levels is a way to describe a set of more or less related concepts that are abstracted in order to observe, describe, and explain social phenomena (Sarup, 1975). Some psychologists have remained tied to the idea that a phenomenon exists at a singular level of analysis, largely the individual (e.g., Cunningham, Preacher, & Banaji, 2001; Krech & Crutchfield, 1948). From this perspective, those who have argued that a phenomenon can be explained using multiple levels of analysis have been challenged to articulate exactly how his or her data help one to view, describe, and explain their findings. The argument for multiple levels of analysis has been built on the premise that individuals, groups, and social structures are not closed systems and that explaining one of them solely at its own level of analysis is not adequate (Sarup, 1975). Pettigrew’s (1997) theoretical work on levels of analysis offers a useful model because it considers the development of social psychological theories that attend to various kinds of justice concerns. Research has shown how important cross-level theoretical links can be (see Pettigrew, 2006, 2008). In Pettigrew’s 1997 model, the macro level describes social structure including institutions, organizations, and cultures. The micro level is associated with the individual, including personality and biology. The meso level, which lies between the macro and the micro, is the situational level where social interactions occur, as Deaux (2006) describes: “[where] people engage with one another and, in so doing, transmit their own positions and are impacted by the attitudes and behaviors of others” (p. 4). Pettigrew’s (1997) multi-level model encourages us to study and understand the psychological processes by which social norms become integrated and normalized within individuals and within a larger community. Said differently, the meso level is where the macro and micro interact. In the academic lineage of Lewin-Deutsch-Opotow-McClelland that we explore here, we stretch this model incrementally and suggest that the macro and micro levels are constantly entwined; each inevitably entails the other. This means that in even the smallest unit of analysis, the macro comes alive. Because we see the micro and macro in an interlocking relationship with one another, we also identify and explore the methodological paradoxes that accompany this relationship: How can researchers observe, collect and analyze data that capture the micro and macro elements, as well as their entwined relationship? With this in mind, we turn to the development of the constructs distributive justice and levels of analysis within the work of three generations of Lewinian scholars. The chapter moves from the past to the present so that we can see the accumulation of questions and approaches over three subsequent generations of scholars. We see how time and changing socio-political conditions serve to extend ideas and theories in innovative directions.

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Morton Deutsch: Social Roles, Regulation, and Inequality In his 1975 paper, “Equity, equality and need: What determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice,” Morton Deutsch defines the concept distributive justice as, “the distribution of the conditions and goods which affect individual well-being” (p. 137). He goes on to explain that well-being is not merely psychological, but also includes physiological, economic, and social aspects of well-being. In his 2006 chapter in The Handbook of Conflict Resolution, Deutsch discusses justice broadly, describing six forms of injustice and the relationship between justice and conflict. Deutsch draws on decades of social science and social issues thinking and research to make integrative and broad points about the nature of justice, inequity, and research. Deutsch’s six types of injustice describe fair outcomes and fair treatment, which are assumed to be linked. His formulation articulates a simple yet important feedback system: what comes before affects what comes after. This echoes Deutsch’s Crude Law of Social Relations (1973), which asserts a circular relationship between attitudes, behavior, and type of relationship: “the characteristic processes and effects elicited by a given type of relationship tend also to elicit that type of social relationship” (p. 365). Talking openly and honestly, for example, can lead to cooperative relations, which, in turn, can produce a cooperative orientation to a conflict and lead to the constructive management of a conflict. In describing the relationship between distributive and procedural justice, Deutsch (1975) argues that a sense of injustice is more often aroused by complaints about procedures than about distributive outcomes because, he states, “distributive values are often taken for granted while the procedures are not” (p. 35). This suggests that procedures tend to be more salient than distributions and distributions can be accepted as normal, even when they are unfair. Deutsch (2006) also posits an interactive relationship between procedural and distributive values: [F]air procedures yield good information for use in the decision making processes as well as voice in the processes for those affected by them, and considerate treatment as the procedures are being implemented (p. 48).

This clarifies an important temporal relationship between these two prominent justice models and implies that procedures precede, and ultimately are in the service of, resource distribution. Indeed, the fair distribution of resources is a central theme in justice research. Definitions of what is “fair” and the range of resources available for distribution remain an open and debated question (see Hegtvedt & Cook, 2000, for overview). For example, when is fair considered to be the absence of bad, the presence of good, or both? How do definitions of fairness change when considering various types of groups (neighborhoods, groups, families, partners)? And how and when do people in various contexts (e.g., segregated housing, genocide, intimate relations) understand the injustice that is inevitably unevenly distributed within a society? Like Foa and Foa, Deutsch (1975) has expressed the view that different values, norms, and rules define the appropriate system of justice for relations that have an

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“economic,” “solidarity,” or “caring” character. In 2006, he explained, “Every type of system – from a society to a family – distributes benefits, costs, and harms” (p. 59). His work on interracial housing, Interracial Housing: A Psychological Evaluation of a Social Experiment (Deutsch & Collins, 1951), is a classic example of psychological research that is attentive to societal systems that distribute resources and to the negative effects of inequitable distribution for individuals in the social/caring sphere. Deutsch and Collins’ study compared two types of public housing: one was integrated and placed African Americans and whites as next door neighbors; the other was segregated and tenants were assigned to live in separate buildings based on race, as was the norm at that time. The study revealed that social arrangements of housing affected social relations, community morale, and individuals’ racial attitudes. Those who lived in integrated housing reported more positive inter-racial attitudes and fewer negative stereotypes than individuals living in segregated housing. The research design used in this study, which sought to address the normalized and prevalent injustice of segregation, focused on domestic, proximate, and private experiences. In essence, this study made evident that the membrane between the public and private sphere was illusory and that a bidirectional relationship existed between segregation policies and individual racial attitudes. By focusing on the domestic spaces and people’s homes, Deutsch and Collins (1951) highlighted how individuals and families embody social policies and how these policies play out in mundane, everyday inter-personal encounters. In fact, these authors described the types of interactions they observed as intimate: “. . . neighborly contacts are of the more intimate types of contact” (p. 7). This focus on intimate contact and domestic space designated these contexts as worthy areas for research and, importantly, as contexts in which to develop psychological theory and knowledge. There are echoes of Lewin in the naturalistic setting of the research, the focus on subjectivity in the research design, and the interest in social justice in the research question. Deutsch and Collins’s study of interracial housing foreshadows two additional links to Opotow and McClelland’s subsequent work. First, it draws attention to inclusionary possibilities within exclusionary contexts. This is a theme in Opotow’s work, such as her research using historical data to examine the inclusion of black Americans in Southern society after the American Civil War (Opotow, 2008a, 2008b). In Opotow’s study, she found evidence of social, political, legal, and economic inclusion in historical analyses of the Reconstruction (1885–1877) after the American Civil War (1861–1865). For example, she found that black communities built their own enduring, inclusionary social institutions that included schools, churches, and benevolent societies, but inclusionary gains for black Americans in the larger society were difficult to achieve or sustain. The second link to subsequent work is seen in Deutsch and Collins’ focus on the domestic sphere as context for research. By identifying research participants who reported on their everyday behaviors and attitudes (housewives, in the case of the interracial housing study), the authors imagined interpersonal social contacts as meso level interactions among individuals and groups. Within these interactions, it is possible to observe how individual attitudes and beliefs (micro level) are affected

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by societal institutions and systems (macro level). This elaboration of the social meanings of intimate contact foreshadows McClelland’s research that similarly considers the intimate space not only as representative of the individual or family, but as containing within much of the information about social structures that is needed to understand the distribution of resources and considerations of fairness in social relationships. While we have highlighted a thin slice of Deutsch’s theoretical and empirical research here, it is clear how his elaboration of justice concepts in psychological research set the groundwork for decades of investigations into social roles, inequality, and the effects of everyday injustices. We have highlighted aspects of his work that we find especially provocative and productive in how they pushed the discipline of psychology to address issues of injustice: his focus on distribution of multiple types of resources, his use of naturalistic research designs, his interest in the domestic space as a site for research, and his vigilant focus on the role that societal structures play in individual beliefs and attitudes. These interests animated Lewin’s research as well and by looking backwards in time to see Deutsch’s influences, we are also able to see the profound influence Deutsch’s work has had in subsequent generations of justice researchers. Multi-generational collaborations and recognition of influence is required for justice work. Like many other justice projects that are focused on building resources, new norms, and developing inclusionary practices (Opotow, 2008b), academic researchers depend on the resources developed within one generation that are used in the next. This renewal and extension of resources is not often enough recognized beyond the required citations in our academic writings (cf., Morawski, 2001). Throughout this chapter, we recognize the resources, information, and caring (a variant of love), that animates the intergenerational scholarly dynamic required for social justice research.

Susan Opotow: Theorizing Conditions of Injustice in Contemporary and Historical Contexts Inspired by the scholarship of Deutsch and others, Susan Opotow has studied changes in the scope of justice. In particular, she asks, “What social psychological conditions and contexts constrict or widen the scope of justice?” In the Scope of Justice scale, Opotow defined the scope of justice empirically, identifying three central attitudes that delineate the construct, moral inclusion: (1) believing that considerations of fairness apply to others; (2) willingness to allocate a share of community resources to others; and (3) willingness to make sacrifices to foster others’ well-being (Opotow, 1987, 1993). The Scope of Justice scale enables researchers to study the psychological processes involved when specific persons and groups are imagined as deserving of resources or, conversely, imagined others as undeserving. Because one’s scope of justice connects with basic beliefs and attitudes that circulate within the norms and practices of a society and are not always conscious, it

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can influence people in ways that they may not be able to articulate. Thus, without critical scrutiny, one’s scope of justice may seem normal, inevitable, and they way things are or ought to be (Opotow, 1987, 1990, 2011). Opotow (1990, 1997) has argued that unless others are within one’s scope of justice, the norms of distributive justice and the tenets of procedural justice can seem immaterial. A person would not feel distressed, for example, by distributive or procedural inequity directed at those they deem as outside the scope of justice and therefore as morally irrelevant. Yet distributive and procedural injustices play an important role in moral exclusion. They can foment moral exclusion by instituting exclusionary procedures and outcomes and they can solidify an exclusionary status quo with institutionalized exclusionary decisions and outcomes that perpetuate injury, debilitation, or elimination of those outside the scope of justice. Opotow’s early research took the distribution of rights, justice, and their potential to foster well-being for individuals and groups in a novel direction. By demonstrating that rights are distributed to both human and non-human beings, Opotow’s work (1987, 1993) made plain the fact that resources are distributed according to often implicit decisions concerning deserving and entitlement. Opotow’s research on the scope of justice added an important layer to the concept of resources. She articulated how individuals decided whether an “other” (of varying types) was entitled to or deserved resources. Foa and Foa’s (1974) six basic resources (love, service, goods, money, information, and status) tend to be seen as goods, but their absence can also inflict harm. For example, informal norms and formal laws that institutionalize the unavailability of key societal resources (e.g., affordable food, health care, and schools; fair wages; safe housing and working conditions) are essential mechanisms by which injustice is distributed. The lack of goods can inflict harms resulting in durable betweengroup disparities in well-being that can appear as fair or natural. Opotow articulated that resources did not simply mean allocating material goods; it also included relinquishing one’s own claim on a good to foster an others’ well being. Making personal or collective sacrifices and understanding that considerations of fairness are themselves a type of distributive resource, was an essential piece of justice research that had not yet been sufficiently theorized or empirically investigated (e.g., Opotow, 1993; cf., Hafer & Olsen, 2003). Opotow (2001a, 2011) has identified three dimensions describing various expressions of exclusion from the scope of justice: extent, narrowly-focused within a society to widespread; severity, mild to blatant manifestations; and expression, passive to active behavior. In this theoretical model, each of the three dimensions can vary from low to high, producing a continuous set of conditions that enable researchers to envision moral exclusion not only as a multi-dimensional construct, but also as having a range of possible outcomes depending on the psychological, environmental, historical, and political contexts that surround individuals and groups. Across this topography of moral exclusion, it is possible to see, as Opotow (1990, 1995, 2011) has described, that those excluded from the scope of justice can be seen as: “(1) psychologically distant from oneself; (2) unworthy of constructive obligations; (3) nonentities, expendable, and undeserving; and

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(4) eligible for processes and outcomes that would be unacceptable for those inside the scope of justice” (Opotow, 2001b, p. 158). Opotow’s recent research not only investigates the conditions in which moral exclusion grows, but also uses historical examples to explore which conditions have enabled an inclusionary ethos to develop, including the post-Civil War era in the U.S. (2008a, 2008b) and Germany after World War II (2011). This research focuses on psychological aspects of a nation’s effort to grapple with past injustices they inflicted. She examines museums dedicated to wars and remembrance, and how the scope of justice is delineated in the design of museum exhibitions about unjust periods in the past, as well as how museums convey this past to contemporary visitors. This allows the observation of often-invisible psychological aspects of moral exclusion in society. Through the agency of curators and educators, museums can describe past exclusion from the scope of justice in ways that make the justice attitudes in that period salient and, at the same time, direct critical attention to the prevailing scope of justice in contemporary life. Focusing on German museums dedicated to National Socialism (“Nazi”) in World War II, Opotow is able to examine an often-unexplored component of justice – information distribution. Historical moral exclusion and injustice, epitomized in genocide, are captured in evidence that is preserved and publically circulated as a mechanism of commemoration and reparation for past societal injustice. Repudiating this past is a first step to fostering an inclusionary ethos. By examining social injustices from this historical perspective, Opotow is able to observe change over time – not in terms of years, but over decades and generations. This enables the observation of psychological changes that accompany shifting social, economic, and political conditions, consistent with Lewin’s belief that we need an understanding of the world in which individuals and groups live in order to understand individual and group behaviors. Rather than describing psychological attitudes and beliefs as static, Opotow’s research is akin to a conceptual discriminant analysis that takes a given attitude, social justice or injustice in her case, and looks back to see what preceded it. She investigates the antecedents of the scope of justice to investigate its dynamic nature, both towards increasing inclusion and exclusion. In her work on the approaches German museums take to motivate a close examination of the Holocaust, Opotow (2011) describes how a group of student hairdressers who visited the House of Wannsee Conference, a commemorative site and education center near Berlin, related the processes of genocide to their own profession (Kleiber, n.d.). During this visit they could see how marking people’s clothing and bodies also marked them as outside the scope of justice and fostered their annihilation. They were able to observe how marking Jews’ clothing with Jewish stars, publically shaving off Jewish women’s hair as a sign of degradation, tattooing bodies of people in concentration camp to mark them as property, and re-using body parts of those who were murdered were elements of the exclusionary continuum. This visit to the House of Wannsee Conference enabled these students to understand that the extreme moral exclusion and violence of the Third Reich was inflicted in many ways by many participants on many bodies, supporting an understanding that the extreme moral exclusion of Holocaust was achieved in physical micro-interactions, often enacted within the intimate space of the body.

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Opotow’s work extends Deutsch’s considerations of social conditions in contexts of contemporary and historical conflict (e.g., Rwanda, the USA Civil War, and World War II). She theorizes and researches socio-political conflicts at the macro level in order to examine the psychology of injustice and trace change in the scope of justice (inclusionary, exclusionary, or both) over time that profoundly influence social relations and its relation to justice and injustice. Looking at post-war contexts she has found that, in each, inclusion followed exclusion as the result of a massive and sustained effort. In other words, to grasp intergroup relations it is important to understand the scope of justice as it is and how it has changed over time. The scope of justice, she argues, can only be understood in light of what came before. It is equally important to recognize conflicts within a society about what the scope of justice ought to be. The willingness to consider fairness, allocate resources, and make sacrifices to support the well being of particular groups influences how these groups will interact and whether that interaction will occur with the desire for more egalitarian or oppressive relations (Opotow, 2008b). The methodological practice of historical analysis has enabled Opotow to observe those patterns that exist across time, across political conditions, and across national priorities. Attention to the inclusionary trajectory after the American Civil War, for example, indicates that achieving inclusion is a multi-generational project in which gains achieved by one generation may remain quiescent for years, even generations, but later emerge as important tools of social change. This was the case for the 13th , 14th and 15th Amendments to the USA Constitution (approved during Reconstruction, 1865–1877) that conferred important rights on black Americans that were all but nullified in the violence of the Jim Crow period (ca. 1880– 1965) when torture and lynchings visited societal violence on the bodies of black Americans (cf., Garland, 2005). These earlier gains served as legal tools a century later when the Civil Rights Movement (1960s) pushed for laws that fostered such inclusionary change as voting rights (Opotow, 2008a). It is in these patterns across time that we can see what socio-political conditions were required to de-naturalize inequality, reduce injustice, to substantially change the conditions affecting groups that been marginalized, and ultimately, foster the wellbeing of individuals and families. One of the most important themes in Deutsch’s work is a consistent focus on asymmetry and conflict at each level of analysis (and how asymmetry at one level affects other levels). When imagined at the macro level, asymmetry and conflict are often imagined in terms of violent conflict, social policies, and institutions that regulate and systematize inequity, such as the violently enforced racial segregation of the Jim Crow period in the USA (Opotow, 2008b) or the Holocaust (Opotow, 2011). When moving from the macro to micro levels of analysis, researchers often transfer these same ideas to the individual and consider behaviors and attitudes, such as inter-personal violence, prejudice, and hate (cf., Opotow & McClelland, 2007). It is possible, however, to see dynamics of inequality in ordinary social relations. Sara I. McClelland’s work, which closely examines injustice in individuals, is, like Lewin, Deutsch, and Opotow, aware that societal norms and practices play out in individuals’ everyday intimate relationships and lives.

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Sara I. McClelland: Distributive Justice in the Intimate Domain Sara I. McClelland focuses on what Foa and Foa (1974) might have described as the distribution of love. In her research on the strategies individuals use to evaluate the quality of their intimate experiences, McClelland braids together Lewin’s interest in the production of social norms, Lewin and Deutsch’s interest in the intimate relationship as an important site of negotiation, Deutsch’s observation that even within intimate social relations there are concerns about distribution of scarce resources (Deutsch, 2006, p. 45), and finally, Opotow’s articulation of how deservingness – fairness, as well as violence – is psychologically produced and enacted by individuals within societies. McClelland combines all of these potent influences in her research on sexual satisfaction to inquire about the development of deservingness in sexual and intimate relationships. In addition to theorizing individuals’ sense of deservingness as developed by Opotow (1990), McClelland extends this work and asks how the scope of justice might be unfairly applied to the self within relational dynamics. In her work, she asks, “What do we call exclusionary practices when the self imposes them him or herself in the form of lowered expectations?” This question encourages researchers working within the distributive justice paradigm to consider the distribution of deservingness within intimate relationships in new ways. Issues of social justice in the sexual domain have largely been studied in terms of unlawful sexual behaviors, negative outcomes, and violence in inter-personal relationships. McClelland has looked, instead, at the distribution of satisfaction, i.e., the distribution of positive outcomes as a way to observe distributive justice. Building from Michelle Fine’s (1988) influential work on discourses of desire in school environments and her subsequent collaborations with Fine (Fine & McClelland, 2006, 2007; McClelland & Fine, 2008a, 2008b), McClelland has focused on two aspects of the intimate domain: the perceived quality of intimate encounters (how satisfied one feels) and the expectations that individuals have for satisfying sexual experiences. In this research, McClelland investigates the sexual body as route to describe experiences of injustice, i.e., how individuals regard their own and others’ bodies as deserving of relationally and sexually positive and satisfying experiences. Instead of using sex as a route to delimitate harms (e.g., genital mutilation, rape, coercion), McClelland’s research focuses on the distribution of positive outcomes as a means to highlight that unequal distribution of “goods” in the intimate domain (cf., Nussbaum, 1999). With some important exceptions (Steil, 1997, 2001), research on satisfaction in relationships has focused on close relationships (e.g., married couples), and particularly on perceptions of equity in non-sexual aspects of a couple (e.g., housework, child care; cf., Deutsch, 1999). The sexual aspects of a relationship, however, have received little attention, either due to it being seen as off limits, idiosyncratic, or, perhaps, because there have not yet been sufficient ways to imagine the distribution of resources within this domain. If sex is a site for justice research, a number of questions need to be assessed: What resources are distributed? What procedures

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determine their distribution? Who is responsible for distribution? When does this occur? What mechanisms are used to decide what counts as reward? And what are possible reparations for harm in the private sphere? Early equity theorist Hatfield’s research on love and sex, in collaboration with Berscheid, has been influential in the psychological justice literature on close relationships (Hatfield, Rapson, & Aumer-Ryan, 2008). While this body of research made important strides in investigating individuals’ estimations of fairness and equity, McClelland’s work has, instead, focused on how inequity is normalized within intimate relationships, how expectations for reward and cost are determined, and how deservingness informs these decisions. Building from Steil’s (1997, 2001) research on marital relationships, sexual relationships have the potential to inform and shape theoretical descriptions of how fairness are not only evaluated, but politically and socially determined through gender and sexuality norms. For example, given the extensive research on the negative influence gender norms have on sexual well-being, e.g., via sexual compliance, (Impett & Peplau, 2003) and gender norm conformity (Kiefer & Sanchez, 2007), men and women face very different social norms when engaging in or imagining sexual experiences. In addition, given the legal and social policies which regulate same-sex sexual behavior, heterosexual and same-sex couples varying levels of sexual stigma related to their sexual experiences (Herek, 2007). The question remains: How do these and other prevalent norms affect what individuals feel they deserve from their sexual experiences and intimate relationships?

The Role of Expectations in Justice Research Answering questions about deservingness, posed above, requires understanding the role of expectations. Expectations are an important and under-theorized antecedent of sexual satisfaction judgments. Sexual expectations are an individual’s beliefs about his or her future sexual self, including behaviors, relationships, feelings – and importantly, the quality of these elements in sexual experiences (Savin-Willams & Diamond, 2004). In the study of sexual expectations, the idiographic perspective has often been categorized as primary and un-problematically studied in isolation from the social and political spheres in which these expectations were developed. Interestingly, researchers who study sexual satisfaction have consistently found that expectations are integral to individuals’ sexual satisfaction evaluations, but have not investigated or analyzed the production of sexual expectations. For example, Byers and Wang (2004) reflect on the role of perceived equity and expectations of balance within the sexual dyad: “It appears that the precise rules governing the exchanges (i.e., equity or equality) are relatively unimportant as long as partners perceive their exchanges to be balanced” (p. 207). This point – that the perception of balance is primary – highlights the role of expectation within the sexual domain. Indeed, Lawrence and Byers (1992) found that sexual rewards were compared to a “general notion of how rewarding a sexual relationship should be” when evaluating

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their levels of rewards. Lastly, DeLamater has made this point explicit in his definition of the construct: “Sexual satisfaction refers to the degree to which a person’s sexual activity meets his or her expectations” (DeLamater, 1991, p. 62, emphasis added). What remains under-studied is the extent to which factors such as sexism and heterosexism persistently affect individuals’ expectations for sexual satisfaction and whether these contexts are sufficiently captured in existing theories and measures. Given that data on sexual satisfaction are often collected using close-ended measures and only within specific intimate relationships, questions remain concerning the range of dimensions, the valence of these dimensions, and the potential relationships between these dimensions for individuals when they make these evaluative decisions. In an effort to better understand the psychological dimensions in individuals’ appraisals and how these might be affected by social and sexual norms, McClelland designed a series of studies that examine definitions that individuals bring to their intimate experiences and whether these definitions are accurately captured in existing measures and methods. She has done this in diverse samples of heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) young adults (2009, 2010, in press). The socio-political conditions surrounding this research are important to note as each historical moment provides its own context for research that imagines the body as a productive site for social justice research. In the early twenty first century, there have been a number of watershed political losses and gains that have set the stage for research on sexuality that extends beyond sexual identity and sexual behavior. These include, gains in same-sex marriage equality (Herek, 2006), attention on the negative effects of the sexualization of girls and young women (American Psychological Association, 2010), research on consequences of minority stress and stigma for same-sex couples (Frost & Meyer, 2009; Meyer, 2003), increased awareness of the toxic effects of bullying related to gender and sexuality of children and young adults (McKinley, 2010), as well as the negative consequences of abstinence-only sexual education in schools (Fine & McClelland, 2006), just to name a few. These social and political conditions serve to remind us that sexual rights and injustices are not simply found in inequitable outcomes, but in the infrastructure that upholds these rights and the public policies that distribute goods and punishments throughout an individual’s life. It also reminds us that young people are especially vulnerable as they grow up and depend on the structures and policies that govern and regulate – in this case, regulating sexual health (see Fine & McClelland, 2007). With these conditions in mind and building from existing research on the sexual development of young adults (see Tolman & McClelland, 2011), McClelland has made steps to fill in the missing elements of what we know about young people and how they develop into healthy sexual adults. Due to a nearly exclusive focus on a sexual health model that is concerned with avoiding disease, we know little about helping young people develop sexual expectations for pleasure and satisfaction or how to measure these outcomes in research settings. This is an important gap to address in the literature on young people, but is also an important consideration in research pertaining to individuals across the life span. McClelland’s work, to date, has focused on the role of gender roles and sexual stigma and how these

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separately and together affect sexual expectations. Both are deeply rooted in what men and women are expected to do and with whom. Critical discussions of gender roles and sexual stigma have been and should continue to be concerned with linking public policies regarding sexuality with private experiences and documenting how the public insinuates itself in intimate moments (Fine & McClelland, 2007). In a set of companion studies, McClelland (2009) examined rates and definitions of sexual satisfaction in two samples of young adults. In order to examine these issues of evaluation, fairness, and satisfaction, McClelland used a modified version of Cantril’s (1965) self-anchored ladder item in order to examine how participants organized a scale that did not provide guidance on how to interpret the low, middle, and high ends of a sexual satisfaction 10 point Likert scale. This study revealed that men and women imagined a very different low end of the sexual satisfaction scale. While women imagined the low end of a sexual satisfaction scale to include the potential for extremely negative feelings and the potential for pain, men imagined the low end of a sexual satisfaction scale to represent the potential for less satisfying sexual outcomes, but they never imagined harmful or damaging outcomes for themselves. This finding is not completely surprising given the fact that women’s sexual vulnerability is well documented (Blackman, 1989). For the purposes of research, however, this finding alerts us to the fact that the low end of the scale may be very differently interpreted by men and women. When a woman is asked to rate her sexual satisfaction and she is presented with a scale that ranges from “low” to “high,” a woman’s comparison point when evaluating “low” may be qualitatively different than a man faced with the same item. For women, low sexual satisfaction signals the potential presence of pain associated with sex, while for men low sexual satisfaction signals the absence of good or plentiful sex. An examination of the mid- and high-points of the scale also revealed a gendered pattern. Women largely described the mid-point of the scale in terms of being physically but not emotionally satisfying, with the highest possible sexual satisfaction was in the unison of these two experiences. Descriptions of the mid-point that were typical for women included, “no connection with the person,” “nothing special,” and “no orgasm.” The move towards the high-end was additive, meaning that the high end included both people having orgasms and feeling “connected” to one another. For men, the mid-point often included “normal” sex, “just plain ol’ orgasm,” or masturbation. On the high end, men often described their partners’ satisfaction, with phrases such as, “she was pleased,” “a close relationship with the person,” and “both participants enjoyed, neither was left unhappy,” but it was mostly in the high end of the scale where the men included their partners. Across these studies, McClelland has consistently found that heterosexual women defined their satisfaction using social and relational cues. The inclusion of partners (and their satisfaction) was often used as a baseline, while heterosexual men more consistently defined satisfaction as an individual embodied act and social qualities were less frequently used to determine their satisfaction. This raises important questions about how to interpret the “naturalness” of these priorities and, on the one hand, could be read as reinforcing a stereotype of women as naturally socially oriented and therefore, attentive to the needs of others (Buss, 1998).

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Alternatively, these findings could be interpreted as evidence of how historically marginalized groups rely on and imagine dystopian comparisons when making evaluative judgments about the quality of their lives. This finding parallels Deutsch and Collins’ (1951) findings in the interracial housing study in which black participants reported increased satisfaction with integrated housing and relationships with white neighbors. Taking a page from the critical interpretation that Deutsch and Collins used in their study, it is imperative to consider the range of definitions of “fair” in research environments: When is “fair” defined the absence of negative, painful, or damaging alternatives? And, how as researchers can we observe how people make sense of injustice, while at the same time, not conflating this sense-making process with natural or individually decided priorities? By examining how young adults narrated and defined satisfaction in their intimate relationships, McClelland has been able to observe patterns in how individuals anchor their level of satisfaction in relationship to the amount of resources that they had imagined as possible. By theoretically framing satisfaction as not only as a person-level outcome, but as a socially produced process through social interaction (which is variable by gender and sexual orientation), McClelland is able to demonstrate how individual assessments of intimate experiences – that which some may see as beyond the reach of the social – are indeed social in nature and have justice import. The methods and findings in McClelland’s work have important resonance with Opotow’s (2011) observations of contemporary German hairdressers witnessing the history of hair in marking Jews during the Holocaust: the physical body is consistently a site of moral exclusion – by oneself or by another. As psychologists, we have each struggled with the paradox of making evident this fusion of the micro and macro, private and public, intimate and social. In a recent article, McClelland (2010) elaborates an intimate justice framework that outlines how sexuality researchers can consider and systematically measure the ways that social and political antecedents shape sexual satisfaction ratings in men and women. Feeling satisfied in any domain, such as work, marriage, or friendship, concerns issues of distributive and as procedural justice in the ability to challenge, appeal, exit, and rethink the status quo. It also has implications for inclusionary justice (Opotow, 1990). We see this as an important extension of Lewin and Deutsch’s work on the intersection of person and environment, a new application of theories on moral exclusion and deservingness, and a contribution to how social injustice at the micro and macro levels are entwined. Working in the spirit of feminist concerns that do not merely highlight the extreme dangers experienced by individuals, but the mundane experiences of injustice (Nussbaum, 1999), McClelland’s work, building on Lewin, Deutsch, Opotow, Fine and others, encourages researchers to consider how micro relationships serve as an important site not only to observe conflict, but also to normalize inequity. Adding the intimate level to justice concerns highlights the specificities of contexts and norms which can inform justice theories that are traditionally applied to larger social units and more distal types of social relationships. When considering the physical body and concerns of justice, when the body is considered, it is more

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consistently excused as idiosyncratic, personal, chosen – so what might have been called unjust is recoded as “personal choice.” This sets up a larger question of thinking through the role of justice research in the micro domain: what are the challenges when investigating issues related to intimate justice?

Conclusion: Implications for Distributive Justice Theory This chapter grounds the social justice research of four genealogically consecutive scholars within the particular socio-political conditions of their lives. Their work is attentive to contemporary socio-political conditions and those in their past, both at the macro (society) and micro (personal) level. It is important to note that during each of their lives, the history of their society shaped their world view and their scholarship. Three areas we see as especially provocative in justice research that become even more compelling when viewed through their development and over time: the role of resources in justice research, levels of analysis, methodological challenges facing researchers working in this field. Resources are essential in justice research, their kind, their rules of distribution, and their exchange (cf., Foa & Foa’s, 1974 Social Exchange Theory) in social relationships. Like resource specificity (i.e., type of resource), each level of analysis offers different perspectives on distributive justice, its workings, and the challenges of achieving greater equality and justice in society. Lewin (1935) famously proposed the interaction of the person and environment in producing social behavior. When we look at smaller social units of analysis, such as the family, the marital relationship, or intimate relations, we see that differentiating the person and the environment requires careful distinctions (i.e., what differentiates the person from the environment?) Procedural justice may not only be prior to distributive decisions, but constitute the environment for those decisions. Consistent with Foa and Foa (1974), particular resources call up particular exchange relationships, implying or even creating a social environment, suggesting a key relationship between resources and environments. In the research of three generations of Lewinian scholars, we see an important conceptual link in their interest in and methodological attention to the scope of justice. Each is attentive to the dynamics by which the scope of justice undergoes change, particularly as it shrinks to reduce the applicability of justice, inevitably changing how people make sense of justice and injustice. Justice scholars have primarily studied entitlement as an outcome (i.e., “did the individuals feel equally treated”?). In contrast, an important thread that links this work is an analysis of entitlement as a process that is continually informed by social norms, public policies, and a psychology of insider and outsider status that is enacted in micro relationships. Stated broadly, this work asks: “When, how, where, and by whom are decisions made that reshape the scope of justice and change what parties (believe they) deserve?” This approach to justice research, as Lewin has argued, reveals the influence of the person and the environment.

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Research at intimate levels has something important to teach scholars interested in social psychological processes. While “social” tends to be interpreted in macro-level forms (i.e., inter-group processes), in sex research, “social” tapers to the biographic, challenging notions about what factors contribute to an intimate status quo. It becomes difficult to delineate the boundary where the “social” stops and the “person” starts. Similarly, Orbuch and Harvey (1991) argue that sexual relationships are just another social psychological process by which to study how “individuals are influenced by the real, imagined, or implied presence of others” (p. 9, citing Allport, 1968). Social psychologists can learn something in this extremely narrowed social environment. However, it requires sharper definitions in order to live up to Lewin’s (1935) interactionist model of the person and the environment and to account for a continuum in which these two categories so readily blur into one another (Rusbult & Van Lange, 2003). This observed fusion between the intimate and the social is not new and is, in fact, one of the primary premises of feminist research (Holland et al., 1998). We comment on it here because it is an example of how feminist and social psychological theories mutually inform research design, methods, and findings and how both, at their core, attend to justice issues in the relationship of the personal to the political.

Methodological Paradoxes of Studying Reduced Expectations Across these bodies of work, there is a shared interest in an often unstated paradox within justice research – an acknowledgement that social conditions affect individuals and their sense of deserving. If so, what are the limits of methods relying on individuals (sometimes those who are most affected by injustice) to articulate their own wants and deserving? Can research design give researchers “night vision goggles” enabling them to see what is ordinarily invisible and normalized? What limitations result from methods that require those most affected by injustice to provide data on injustice? And what types of methods need to be developed in an effort to collect data on individual experiences and experiences of injustice that do not require the individual to see beyond normalized injustice in order to demand reparation? Psychological research in this same spirit includes Crosby’s work on the denial personal discrimination (1982, 1984), Major’s work on social comparison (Major, McFarlin, & Gagnon, 1984), and Biernat and colleagues’ work on shifting standards (1991). These are examples of researchers working to both attend to evaluations of individuals and the social conditions in which these evaluations are made. Looking to other fields, we see other theorists who have articulated this same phenomenon. For example, Nussbaum (1999) uses the term “preference deformation” (p. 151) to discuss the process of adaptation in which an individual’s preferences are shaped to accord with the frequently narrow set of opportunities that one has. Nussbaum argues that the liberal tradition regards people’s satisfaction and preferences simply as given. She argued, “Empirically, it has been amply demonstrated

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that people’s desire and preferences respond to their beliefs about social norms and about their own opportunities. Thus, people usually adjust their desires to reflect the level of their available possibilities” (1999, p. 11). Economist Sen (1995) has argued that we see this is the phenomenon internationally in basic health, nutrition and security issues: “If one does not know what it is like to feel well nourished, it is especially easy to be content with the undernourished state in which one lives . . . The existence of such ‘adaptive preferences,’ Sen argues, gives us strong reasons to be highly mistrustful of existing preferences in choosing social policies” (Nussbaum, 1999, p. 151). Throughout this chapter, we have considered the methodological challenges justice researchers face when seeking to collect data from individuals who experience injustice. What does it mean to do research on justice when methods need to be constantly critically examined for their prejudices, particularly when the scope of justice remains implicit? It is not enough to ask whether outcomes are perceived to be distributed equally. McClelland (2010) argues that researchers must also inquire as to the nature of the benchmarks being used, the history of the groups and individuals being assessed, and evaluate how each is deciding what is “good enough.” Findings of high satisfaction in impoverished or discriminatory settings (e.g., Crosby, 1984) encourage us to reflect back on the theories we are using to organize human emotions and behaviors (Deutsch & Krauss, 1965). This recognition of the permeable membrane between the political and the personal, the public and the private, and the large and the small, links these four generations of social psychologists together. Each of us has addressed this permeability by making critical methodological decisions that enable us to try and capture not only the person but also his or her social context in ways that denaturalize and destabilize the conceptual and methodological firewall that is often maintained between the two. Beginning with Lewin’s (1939) influential conceptualization of “field theory” and his experiment studies of authoritarianism (Lewin, Lippitt, & White, 1939), to Deutsch’s theoretical contributions and studies in the lab and in the field, to Opotow’s study of museums and use of archival data to examine changes in the scope of justice over time, and finally, McClelland’s revival of historical psychological methods including Cantril’s ladder (1965) and Stephenson’s (1953) Q methods, these four researchers have worked to continually make evident the range of methods that are available and necessary to do social psychological research that is concerned with issues of justice.

Genealogy of Mentorship: The History of Ideas We have taken a modified personality psychology “lives” approach (Ryff, 1987) to trace Morton Deustch’s work on justice, both its origins and how it has moved forward in two generations of scholars. This approach is fundamentally collaborative in its recognition of scholarship as an intergenerational project that supports asking difficult questions with deep social import and using innovative approaches

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to answer them. The theoretical, methodological, and contextual grounding of past work enables the continuing development of theory, method, and applications. We recognize the multi-generationality of our work as well as our debt to our mentors and theirs. Although we take almost eight decades as our unit of time, it is, of course, historically brief and incomplete. We do not, for example, describe Kurt Lewin’s advisor, German philosopher and psychologist Carl Stumpf or his mentors. Nor can we capture the enormous network of influences that informs any program of research. But our approach, which is genealogical and bounded, nevertheless suggests how multiple voices inform, complicate, and facilitate our thinking (cf., Bakhtin, 1981). Taking the idea of our indebtedness, as well as our interests in continually developing justice research to be applicable and relevant to researchers, policy makers, and students, we have explored the tradition of the academic citation and extended it well beyond traditional parameters of author name and year. We have stretched the notion of indebtedness to include not only previous research and relevant findings, but also stretched the notion of citation to include the tremendous intergenerational influences that could not possibly be contained between two small parentheses.

Morton Deutsch’s Comments Chapter by Sara I. McClelland and Susan Opotow Although I have not yet met Sara I. McClelland, I am delighted that she considers me to be one of her intellectual ancestors. Her research studies as well as those of her mentor, Susan Opotow, are highly original, socially important, and very much in the intellectual tradition of social psychology initiated by Kurt Lewin. My work in social psychology has been much influenced by Lewin as was the work of the other students and faculty at the Research Center for Group Dynamics (RCGD) at M.I.T. In the spring of 1978, at the invitation of Stanley Schachter and myself, the surviving members of the RCGD met at Columbia University. The participants included Kurt Bach, Dorwin Castwright, Leon Fetinger, Jack French, Alberto Pepetone, Stanley Schachter, and myself. At this reunion (the first and last one), the participants were asked to indicate how Lewin has influenced their work. From the discussion, it was evident that all of us had been very much influenced by Lewin’s way of thinking about science and by his general orientation to psychology. This is what had most impact on the participants. Very few were still involved with Lewin’s conceptual language or terminology, with topological and vectorial psychology. Some had been stimulated to do work that related to Lewin’s specific theoretical ideas, particularly those relevant to tension systems, level of aspiration theory, social interdependence, group leadership, group decision making, changing individual attitudes, and quasi-stationary equilibria. And several were stimulated

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by Lewin to be concerned with articulating the connections between social psychological theory and change in social practice. Nevertheless, the common thread that linked our group of past RCGD members together was a Lewinian way of thinking. It emphasized the importance of theory; the value of experimentation for clarifying and testing ideas; the interrelatedness between the person and the environment; the interdependence of cognitive structures and motivation; the importance of understanding the individual in his/her social (group, cultural) context; the usefulness of theory for social practice; and the value of trying to change reality for the development of theory. These emphases are not unique to the Lewinian way of thinking; they characterize good social science and good social practice. But Lewin was the one who introduced them to social psychology. In my mentoring of graduate students and my writings about Lewin and field theory, I have sought to pass on to future generations Lewin’s basic approach to science, his metatheory (Deutsch, 1954, 1992). Although I was profoundly influenced by Lewin’s approach, he was not the only influence on my work in social psychology. The writing of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Margaret Mead also influenced my work. Marx’s writing stimulated some of my thinking about distributive justice; Freud helped me to understand what keeps an oppressive relationship in place; and Mead helped me to recognize the broader cultural influences on systems of justice. I note that the ideas of Marx, Freud, and Mead were not alien to Lewin. Just prior to his premature death in 1947, Lewin became interested in Marx’s writing and was beginning to think how he could incorporate some of Marx’s ideas into his work. David Rapaport, a very important psychoanalytic theorist, tried to incorporate Lewin’s tension system theory to clarify some psychoanalytic processes. I met Margaret Mead, for the first time, at a social event sponsored by Marrow, one of Lewin’s most devoted supporters. I now turn to the work of the authors of the chapter. I know Susan Opotow’s work very well but I only know of Sara I. McClelland’s work through their chapter. The research by Susan Opotow on what leads to moral exclusion, as well as the conditions which foster moral inclusion is of profound importance. It helps us to understand why many oppressors feel no guilt; why Nazi leaders who executed Jews were sometimes good family men; why the captains of the ships who brought slaves to the United States, under the most abominable conditions, were often leaders of their church in New England. Opotow’s work has opened up an area of research of great theoretical and social importance. Many other researchers should enter their area. It is relevant to such important issues as: the Holocaust, terrorism, animal rights, and reconciliation as well as many others. Sara I. McClelland’s work is new to me. Her approach to understanding intimate sexual relations is excellent. She has a clear grasp of the fact that

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moral issues, issues of social justice, enter into all social relations, micro and macro. Throughout much of the world, and much of history, women’s subordination to men has been expressed, at the microlevel, in sexual relations (women are sexual objects for male satisfaction; their sexual desires are denied, ignored, or considered immoral) and, at the macro level, denial of their human and political rights (such as their rights to education, economic independence, political participation, the right to divorce, etc.). Let me note my appreciation of their citation of the work of Foa and Foa, whose important ideas have been largely neglected.

References Deutsch, M. (1954). Field theory in social psychology. In G. Lindzey (Ed.), Handbook of social psychology (pp. 181–222). Cambridge, MA: Addison-Wesley. Deutsch, M. (1992). Kurt Lewin: The tough-minded and tender-hearted scientist. Journal of Social Issues, 48(2), 31–43.

Acknowledgments We would like to thank our two readers, Morton Deutsch and Michelle Fine, for their feedback on earlier drafts of this chapter. Their insights and wisdom enhanced our thinking immeasurably. Thanks also to Robert Jansen for his helpful comments.

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Chapter 7

Awakening the Sense of Injustice Morton Deutsch

This chapter is concerned with the sense of injustice of the victim and the victimizer. In it, I shall consider the conditions necessary for awakening the sense of injustice in these different participants in an unjust relationship. My discussion, for illustrative purposes, will focus on race relations in the United States, one of the major sources of injustice in North America.

The Differential Sensitivity to Injustice of the Victim and the Victimizer Bierce, in The Devil’s Dictionary, defined injustice as “a burden which of all those that we load upon others and carry ourselves is lightest in the hands and heaviest upon the back.” Everyday language, similarly, in referring to injustice suggests that injustice is “suffered” by the victim, not the victimizer. Although it may be morally “better to be sinned against than to sin” it is generally accepted that the immediate pain is usually greater for the one who is sinned against than for the sinner. In this section, I wish to consider briefly why there is this asymmetry in the sensitivity to injustice and also some of the circumstances in which the asymmetry is reversed: where the victim identifies with the victimizer and where the victimizer identifies with the victim. The explanation for the asymmetry seems straightforward. The victims usually have relatively little power compared to the victimizers; the latter are more likely to set the terms of their relationship and, through their control of the state and other social institutions, to establish the legal and other reigning definitions of justice. Thus, the victimizers—in addition to their gains from their exploitative actions— commonly have the reassurance of the official definitions of justice and the support Deutsch, M. (1985). Awakening the sense of injustice. In Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective (46–63). New Haven: Yale University Press. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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of such major social institutions as the church, the press, and the schools to deaden their sensitivities to the injustices inherent in their relations with the victim. The victim may, of course, be taken in by the official definitions and the indoctrination emanating from social institutions and, as a result, lose his sensitivity to his situation of injustice. However, the victim is less likely than the victimizer to lose his sensitivity to injustice because he is the one who is experiencing the negative consequences of the injustice. He is also less likely to feel committed to the official definitions and indoctrinations because of his lack of participation in creating them. The explanation of the differential sensitivity in terms of differential gains and differential power is not the complete story. There are, of course, relations in which the victimizer is not of superior power, and yet, even so, he will not experience guilt for his actions. Consider a traffic accident in which a car hits a pedestrian. The driver of the car will usually perceive the accident so as to place responsibility for it upon the victim. Seeing the victim as responsible will enable the driver to maintain a positive image of himself. Projecting the blame on to the victim enables the victimizer to feel blameless. If we accept the notion that most people try to maintain a positive conception of themselves, we can expect a differential sensitivity to injustice in those who experience pain, harm, or misfortune and those who cause it. If I try to think well of myself, I shall minimize my responsibility for any injustice that is connected with me or minimize the amount of injustice that has occurred if I cannot minimize my responsibility. On the other hand, if I am the victim of pain or harm, to think well of myself, it is necessary for me to believe that it was not my due: it is not a just dessert for a person of my good character. Thus, the need to maintain positive self-esteem leads to opposite reactions in those who have caused an injustice and those who suffer from it. Although the need to maintain a positive self-regard is common, it is not universal. The victim of injustice, if he views himself favorably, may be outraged by his experience and attempt to undo it; in the process of so doing, he may have to challenge the victimizer. If the victimizer is more powerful than he and has the support of the legal and other institutions of the society, he will realize that it would be dangerous to act on his outrage or even to express it. Under such circumstances, in a process that Anna Freud (1937) labeled “identification with the aggressor,” the victim may control his dangerous feelings of injustice and outrage by denying them and by internalizing the derogatory attitudes of the victimizer toward himself. Thus, he will become in Lewin’s terms (1935) a “self-hater” who attributes blame for his victimization upon himself or his group. If he attributes the blame to his group, he often will seek to dissociate himself from it and to ingratiate himself with the victimizers in order to curry favor and avoid blame. These reactions are defensive, and not uncommonly, the defenses are directly inculcated by parents in their children. As Grier and Cobbs point out: “Black mothers say as they punish rebellious sons: ‘I’d rather kill him myself than let the white folks get him. He’s got to learn’” (1968, p. 172). Such child-rearing practices among blacks are a residue from slavery, when black children, in order to survive, had to be taught to view themselves as worthy only to be a slave. Child-rearing practices are slow to change. Nevertheless, training for masochistic submission and for identification with the

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oppressor seems less prevalent than it was earlier in this century. Blacks, Jews, women, and other oppressed groups have begun to learn that they are not as powerless and weak as they thought and that their psychological situation is improved by teaching self-respect rather than self-abasement. Just as the victim can identify with the oppressor, a member of the oppressing group can identify with the victim. There are political, social, and psychological factors that predispose to an “identification with the underdog.” In a political struggle among different factions of a ruling group, one of the factions may seek to increase its political power by obtaining the allegiance of an oppressed group, by identifying with its interests, and by using the injustices perpetrated against it as a means of weakening the position of the ruling clique and displacing it. Examples of this are legion in domestic politics in the United States and elsewhere. Despite the political opportunism which may give rise to identification with the underdog, it can heighten the awareness of injustice among the oppressors by the increased political and intellectual attention paid to it: injustice fares poorly in the spotlight. Some clues as to the social factors that predispose to a sympathetic attitude toward the underdog are revealed in White Attitudes toward Black People (Campbell, 1971). Whites, in the United States, are more sympathetic to blacks if: they were born in the East or West rather than in the South or Midwest; they live in a city rather than on a farm or in a small town; their ancestors were Irish or Italian rather than Polish; they are not religious or Jewish rather than Catholic or Protestant; they have higher rather than lower income; they went to college during the past 20 years rather than not having gone to college at all or having gone at an earlier period. Least favorable attitudes of whites toward blacks are found among whites who feel a threat to their status, economic position, or general welfare from the advancement of blacks. Most favorable attitudes are found among those who have relatively secure socioeconomic positions, have been exposed to the influence of the social sciences during their college days, and have had nonthreatening equal-status contacts with blacks. Although the findings just cited are in relation to white attitudes toward black people, it seems to be more generally true that the willingness to question and challenge the ideologies and practices of oppressive ruling groups is more likely to rise from those: (1) whose social positions do not make them feel threatened by advances of the oppressed group; (2) whose ages and social positions are such that they are not deeply ensnared in the existing organization of society; (3) whose backgrounds are such that they have been sensitized to the meaning of injustice by having been exposed to it as members of a minority group; and (4) whose education or social milieu has revealed to them new modes of thinking about society that appear to provide better ways of organizing society than those traditionally supported. As has been well documented, the typical revolutionary of the past two centuries has been of middle-class origin, with better education than most, often in a marginal socialeconomic position that is not commensurate with his education, and frequently in a marginal ethnic group that has little reason to feel a commitment to the traditional ideology and practices of the dominant groups in the society. Personality, as well as political opportunism and social position, can predispose to identification with the underdog. Christian Bay after surveying the

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research literature on student activists and conformists came to the following conclusions: The more secure and sheltered a person’s infancy and childhood, and the more freedom that educational and other social processes has given him to develop according to his inner needs and potentialities, the more likely that a capacity for political rationality and independence will develop, simply because the likelihood of severe anxieties is relatively low. In addition, the better the individual has been able to resolve his own anxieties, the more likely that he will empathize with others less fortunate than himself. A sense of justice as well as a capacity for rationality is, according to this theory, a likely development in relatively secure individuals, whose politics, if any, will therefore tend toward the left—toward supporting the champions of the underdog, not the defenders of established, always unjust, institutions. And young people, with the proverbial impetuousness of youth, are likely to seek extremes of social justice, or militant means, simply because their emotions, and more particularly their sense of elementary morality and justice, have not yet been dulled by daily compromises and defeats to the extent that most older person’s emotions have done. (1967, p. 90)

Bales (1970) describes a somewhat different personality type that is also characterized by identification with the underprivileged. This type is depicted as a somewhat passive, likable individual who is concerned about the lack of emotional supportiveness and warmth in his environment. He blames this on an autocratic authority oriented toward power rather than nurturance. His own aggression and power needs are inhibited except as they are indirectly expressed in criticism and lack of trust of authority. His self-conception and his conscious wishes toward the underprivileged are on the positive altruistic side. In Bales’s terms, “He wants a bloodless revolution—a compassionate reform” (p. 373). His vulnerability is his innocence—his innocence of his own repressed aggressiveness toward authority and his innocence of the hostility among the underprivileged. To foster greater egalitarianism in his society, he may join with leadership of the radical Left and then be dismayed by its aggressive, militant, and often autocratic character. Bales characterizes this type of person as being relatively stable and mature, with a relatively low sense of internal conflict. Other, more pathological types of identification with the underdog have been described by psychoanalytically oriented writers. One type is characterized by a pervasive sense of guilt and deeply rooted masochistic tendencies (Fenichel, 1945). When this type is at its most extreme, the person feels guilty in relation to any injustice anywhere, and in an attempt to undo his guilt, he sacrifices himself by identifying with the victims of injustice. The self-defeating, pathological quality of this type is reflected in the person’s need to have the victim remain in a state of being victimized so that he can continue to feel guilty and continue to sacrifice himself. Despite his outward sympathies, he is neurotically attached to the status quo; social change would be threatening to him. Another type is the left-wing authoritarian personality (Adorno et al., 1950). Like their right-wing counterparts, they perceive the world as made up of a glorified in-group and despised out-groups, hierarchically arranged by power relationships. Unable to establish warm human relationships, they adopt a moralistic condemnatory attitude toward those who differ with them. The right-wing authoritarian takes

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the establishment as his in-group, whereas the left-wing authoritarian takes the antiestablishment as his in-group and reference group, which are often perceived to be the groups who are oppressed by the establishment. The left-wing authoritarian is opposed to social reforms that would lessen the degree of difference and opposition between the haves and have-nots. His psychological interest lies not so much in a just society as in rebelling against those in power as an end in itself or in overthrowing them so that he could take their place as leader-father. The pathology lies in the continuous need to rebel and in the need to replace one form of authoritarianism with another: the needs of the oppressed group are subordinated to these inner compulsions.

Conditions That Awaken and Intensify the Sensitivity to Injustice In the social science literature, discussion of these conditions has centered almost exclusively on the victim’s sense of injustice. Few attempts have been made to understand the conditions that make the victimizer feel his actions are unjust. I shall discuss both, with the realization that more is known about the former than the latter. The major explanatory theme advanced by social scientists for the sensitivity to injustice among victims is that of deprivation. It is commonly assumed that it is relative rather than absolute deprivation that is critical in stimulating dissatisfaction. Research (see Crosby, 1982, for an excellent summary) has demonstrated that people who are well-off by absolute standards may feel more discontent than those who are much worse off if they feel relatively more deprived because their aspirations are high or they are surrounded by people who are even more well-off than they are. There are two somewhat different emphases in the usage of the term relative deprivation. One, which comes from Lewin’s level of aspiration theory (see Deutsch, 1968, for a summary), stresses the discrepancy between the individual’s aspirations and his attainments. The other, derived from the concept of reference groups developed by Hyman, Merton, and Stouffer (see Deutsch & Krauss, 1965, for a summary), focuses upon the discrepancy between the individual’s attainments and the attainments of others whom he uses as references with which to compare himself. These two usages are not contradictory, and, in fact, in Lewinian discussions of factors determining the level of aspiration there is explicit mention of the standards of groups that an individual employs for comparison; these standards, it is asserted, are derived from the groups to which the individual belongs as well as other groups that he employs as models for establishing standards. Runciman (1966) has made a distinction between two types of relative deprivation: egoistic and fraternal. Egoistical deprivation occurs when an individual feels disadvantaged relative to other individuals; fraternal deprivation occurs when a person feels his group is disadvantaged in relation to another group. An individual may feel doubly deprived: as an individual and as a group member. As Tajfel (1982) has pointed out, the two kinds of deprivations have different implications for how an

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individual may improve his situation. To remedy fraternal deprivation, social change (change in the position of his group) is necessary; to remedy egoistic deprivation, only change in his individual situation is entailed. Consonant with the Lewinian tradition, I shall employ relative deprivation to refer to the perceived discrepancy between what a person obtains and what he believes he is entitled to obtain in the distribution of goods and harms. The relative deprivation may be focused on something very specific and temporary (such as how soon one is served in a restaurant) or something as general as one’s life situation. It is useful to distinguish separate areas of relative deprivation, since the individual’s sense of relative deprivation in one area (for example, in relation to work, in relation to his family) may be uncorrelated with what he feels in another area. The total amount of relative deprivation that an individual experiences in any given area (such as work) would be the weighted sum of the relative deprivation in each of the subareas the person perceives to be relevant to evaluating his work situation (for example, his salary, rate of promotion, work conditions, treatment by his supervisor); each subarea would be weighted by its importance to the individual and by its salience. Importance can be defined as the strength of the desire to get what one thinks one is entitled to in the given subarea. Salience is the prominence of the subarea in one’s thinking. This is determined by its relevance to the immediate situation and how much greater its magnitude of relative deprivation is than the average relative deprivation in all subareas (each being weighed by its importance). One of the major determinants of the arousal of the sense of injustice in any given area is the magnitude of relative deprivation in that area: the greater the magnitude of relative deprivation the more likely and the more intense will be the arousal of the sense of injustice. The intensity of the sense of injustice is also undoubtedly influenced by the prior experience and future anticipation of relative deprivation. I suggest that it will be more intense the more sharply the relative deprivation has increased in the recent past and the more sharply it is expected to increase in the future; it will be less intense the more sharply it has decreased in the recent past and the more sharply it is expected to decrease in the future. Thus, I propose that the sense of injustice is determined by the perceived current magnitude of relative deprivation and the perception of how it is changing. I turn now to a consideration of some of the conditions that affect these perceptions. The magnitude of relative deprivation can be affected by influencing any of its value components in any of several ways. One can influence (1) what the individual believes he is entitled to with respect to that value, (2) what he obtains of it, (3) its importance, and (4) its salience. It is evident that relative deprivation can be increased by either increasing what the individual perceives he has a right to or by decreasing what he gets. Similarly, the intensity of the sense of injustice can be decreased either by increasing what a person gets or by decreasing what he thinks he ought to receive. Also, by increasing the perceived importance and salience of the values in which the individual feels a discrepancy between what he is getting and what he is entitled to, one can heighten his sense of injustice. I shall consider here only a person’s conception of what he has a right to expect and obtain.

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Conditions Affecting the Conception of What One Is Entitled to An individual’s conception of what he is entitled to is determined by at least five major kinds of influence: (1) the ideologies and myths about justice that are dominant and officially supported in his society, (2) his amount of exposure to ideologies and myths that conflict with those that are officially supported and are supportive of larger claims for him, (3) experienced changes in his satisfactions-dissatisfactions, (4) his knowledge of what others who are viewed as comparable to him are getting, and (5) his bargaining power. The influence of ideologies and myths. The official ideology and myths of any society help define and justify the values that are distributed to the different positions within the society and, thus, codify for the individual what a person in his position can legitimately expect. Examples are legion of how official ideology and myth limit or enhance one’s views of what one is entitled to. The American poor offer an instance of the potency of myth in creating an identity that promotes docility in the face of deprivation (Edelman, 1971). Americans are taught by their schools, the mass media, and their political rhetoric that America is the land of equal opportunity. Given such pervasive indoctrination, the poor are apt to attribute their condition to their own failings. This view of themselves as unworthy is further supported by cues from governmental practices toward them which place in question their morality, ambition, and competence. As a result, the poor in America have typically been meek and acquiescent, requiring less coercion and less in benefits than has been true in other developed countries. Analogously, the ideology and myth of white supremacy has led whites to expect that they are entitled to deferential behavior from blacks and blacks to expect that they are not entitled to equal treatment from whites. Similarly, men and women under the influence of a sexist mythology and ideology have defined gender entitlements that give the woman supremacy in the narrow confines of the kitchen and the nursery while the men have supremacy in the broad world outside the home as well as in many areas within it. The weakening of official ideologies. It is difficult not to accept the official myths and ideology of one’s society even if they are to one’s disadvantage unless: (1) there is a breakdown of consensual norms and the inability or unwillingness of the ruling elite to act in such a way as to restore these norms; this is likely to occur during a period of rapid social change or intrasocial conflict, either of which could bring into question the legitimacy of traditional myths and values; (2) there is a failure of the society to deliver the entitlements that it has defined as legitimate for one’s position so that the magnitude of one’s relative deprivation is increased; this could be due to natural or social disasters that worsen the conditions of daily life; or (3) there is exposure to new ideologies and new examples that are accepted as legitimate by many people, which stimulate consciousness of new and better possibilities for oneself; this could happen as the result of increased communication arising from new technological developments such as books, newspapers, radio, and television, or it may reflect an increased urbanization and the resulting exposure to more diversity of people, ideas, and experience. Obviously, one would expect that the receptivity to

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new ideologies and examples would be heightened by the breakdown of legitimacy of the existing ideology and by the worsening of one’s own living conditions. Experienced changes in satisfactions-dissatisfactions. Modifications in the conception of what one is entitled to derive not only from alterations in the ideology and myths that one accepts but also from changes in one’s experiences of satisfactions. A period of gain creates expectations about further improvement. As Tocqueville in L’Ancien Régime commented: “Only a great genius can save a prince who undertakes to relieve his subjects after a long oppression. The evil, which was suffered patiently as inevitable, seems unendurable as soon as the idea of escaping from it is conceived. All the abuses then removed seem to throw into greater relief those which remain, so that their feeling is more painful” (1947, p. 186). Many social scientists, before and after Tocqueville, have written insightfully about the “revolution of rising expectations” to explain the paradox that social discontent and even revolutionary activity is more likely to occur after social conditions have improved, when there is rising hope, not bleak despair. The explanation generally follows two major lines. First, improvement of social conditions increases aspirations by increasing what is perceived to be possible to attain. Demand may increase at a faster rate than the actual gains received, with a resulting increase in relative deprivation and in the sense of injustice. The increased discontent is most likely to occur if the gains are discontinued or reversed after the initial gains have heightened future expectations (Davies, 1962). Pettigrew (1964, 1967), as well as many others, has suggested that blacks’ protests for change in the United States in the 1960s reflected this dynamic. A rapid betterment of the social situation of blacks during and after World War II resulted in a sharp rise in expectations, which led to increasing discontent and protest as these expectations were frustrated by a slowdown and even reversal of relative social and economic gains in the 1960s. The second explanation of the effects of gains is similar to that advanced by Tocqueville. Namely, the increase is not uniform in all areas in which the victimized are disadvantaged. Improvement in one area, such as education, only makes one more sensitive to the injustice one is experiencing in other areas such as employment, police protection, and housing. Many social scientists have advanced the proposition that status-disequilibrium (such that there are differences in one’s relative statuses in income, education, social prestige, and the like) is a source of tension and discontent. Thus, for this reason as well as for others advanced above in the discussion of exposure to new experience, a very effective way of enhancing the sense of injustice of the victimized is to increase their education and little else. Comparing oneself to others. Alterations in the conception of what one is entitled to result not only from changes in the level of satisfaction but also from modifications in one’s views either about how comparable others are being treated or about who should be considered as comparable. There is considerable research evidence that one’s attitudes, one’s evaluations of one’s abilities, and one’s emotions are very much influenced by one’s perceptions of these attributes in others who are used for comparison purposes (see Pettigrew, 1967, for a summary). Thus, it is not surprising that one’s views of what one is entitled to will be affected by what happens to

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comparable others. If the firemen in New York City get a salary increase, the policemen will certainly feel that they are entitled to one also. Although the evidence is by no means conclusive, it has been suggested by Festinger (1954), Gurr (1970), and others that comparison tends to be primarily with similar others, and Gurr further suggests that the comparison will be with the similar other whose gains are most rapid. Thus, if someone else who is perceived to be similar is already better off, then one will feel it is unjust, and if, in addition, that person advances rapidly in status, salary, or the like, one will experience a substantial increase in relative deprivation unless one receives a comparable increase. This proposition implies that a person selects among similar others for comparison so as to justify a maximum increase in one’s own entitlements. This is most likely to occur when one’s perceived bargaining power is high or when one’s alienation is high so that one wishes to maximize the sense of injustice. In any case, a potent way of arousing the sense of injustice is to make the victim more aware that comparable others are being treated better or to increase his feeling that it is appropriate to compare himself with others whom he previously considered to be incomparable to himself. Increasing the victim’s bargaining power. One’s perceived bargaining power is undoubtedly a factor determining what one is entitled to and with whom one compares oneself to establish one’s entitlements. If a victim or victimized group is dealing with an unresponsive exploitative group, it is faced with either the possibility of resigning into apathy and depression or attempting to increase its bargaining power sufficiently to compel the other to negotiate. Bargaining power is increased by either of two means: increasing one’s own power or decreasing the other’s power. Attempts to change power can be directed at altering the resources that underlie power (such as wealth, physical strength, organization, knowledge, skill, trust, respect, and affection), or it can be directed toward modifying the effectiveness with which the resources of power are employed. Potential power may not be converted into effective power because those who possess such power may not be aware of their power, or they may not be motivated to use it, or they may use their power inefficiently and unskillfully so that much potential power is wasted. Thus, effective power depends upon the following key elements: (1) the control or possession of resources to generate power, (2) the awareness of the resources one possesses or controls, (3) the motivation to employ these resources to influence others, (4) skill in converting the resources into usable power, and (5) good judgment in employing this power so that its use is appropriate in type and magnitude to the situation in which it is used. By operating on one or more of the key elements listed above, a victimized lowpower group can work to increase its own power or to decrease the power of the high-power group opposing it. There are, of course, endless ways in which each of the key elements can be affected; which of the ways are suitable to employ at any given time will be determined by particular circumstances. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that victimized groups generally lack control over the resources, such as money, guns and official position, that are immediately related to economic, military, and political power. Their primary resources are discontented people and having justice on their side.

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The utility of people as a resource of power is a function of their number, their personal qualities (such as their knowledge, skill, dedication, and discipline), their social cohesion (as reflected in mutual trust, mutual liking, mutual values, and mutual goals), and their social organization (as expressed in effective coordination and communication, division of labor, and specialization of function, planning, and evaluation). Numbers of people are obviously important but undoubtedly not as important as their personal qualities, social cohesion, and social organization. A large, inchoate mass of undisciplined ineffectual people are at the mercy of a small, dedicated, disciplined, well-organized, cohesive group. Most large groups are controlled by less than 10% of their membership. If one examines such low-power minority groups as the Jews, Chinese, and Japanese that have done disproportionately well in the United States and in other countries to which they have migrated, it is apparent that these groups have been characterized by high social cohesion and effective social organization combined with an emphasis upon the development of such personal qualities as skill, dedication, and discipline. Similarly, the effectiveness of such guerrilla forces as the Vietcong has been, in part, due to their cohesion, social organization, and personal dedication. Clearly, the development of these characteristics is of prime importance as a means of increasing the power of one’s group. Elsewhere (Deutsch, 1973), I have considered some of the determinants of cohesion. Here I add that groups become cohesive by formulating and working together on issues that are specific, immediate, and realizable. They become effectively organized as they plan how to use their resources to achieve their purposes and as they evaluate their past effectiveness in the light of their experiences. It is apparent that the pursuit of vague, far-in-the-future, grandiose objectives will not long sustain a group’s cohesiveness. Nor will the exclusive pursuit of a single issue be likely to sustain a long-enduring group unless that issue proliferates into many subissues. Those intent upon developing social cohesion and social organization should initially seek out issues that permit significant victories quickly; they will set out on a protracted indeterminate struggle only after strongly cohesive and effective social organizations have been created. So far, I have stressed personal qualities, social cohesion, and social organization as resources that can be developed by low-power groups to enhance their power. Typically, such resources are vastly underdeveloped in victimized groups; however, they are necessary to the effective utilization of almost every other type of resource, including money, votes, tools, force, and the like. Low-power groups often have two other key assets that can be used to amplify their other resources: discontent and the sense of injustice. If intense enough, these may provide the activating motivation and the continuing determination to change the status quo. They are the energizers for individual and social action to bring about change. Moreover, to the extent that the basis for discontent and the nature of the injustice can be communicated to others so that they experience it, if only vicariously, then supporters and allies will be attracted to the side of the low-power group. And increasing the number of one’s supporters and allies is another important way of increasing one’s power. Thus, in a circular way, bargaining power and the sense of injustice mutually reinforce each other: an increase in one increases the other.

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Discontent and the sense of injustice may be latent rather than manifest in a subordinated group. Neither the consciousness of oneself as victimized or disadvantaged nor the consciousness of being a member of a class of disadvantaged may exist psychologically. If this be the case, consciousness-raising tactics are necessary precursors to the developing of group cohesion and social organization. The diversity of consciousness-raising tactics have been illustrated by the variety of techniques employed in recent years by women’s liberation groups and black power groups. They range from quasi-therapeutic group discussion meetings through mass meetings and demonstrations to dramatic confrontations of those in high-power groups. It is likely that a positive consciousness of one’s disadvantaged identity is most aroused when one sees someone, who is considered to be similar to oneself, explicitly attacked or disadvantaged and sees him resist successfully to overcome the attack; his resistance reveals simultaneously the wound and its cure. By raising the consciousness the discontent and sense of injustice, a powerful and persisting energy for change is activated. If this energy can be harnessed through skilled and disciplined action by dedicated individuals in effectively organized, cohesive groups, then a very powerful instrument for social change has been forged and the situation of the low-power group has been radically altered. It is now in a position to offer significant positive or negative incentives to those in high power. The positive incentives are those deriving from enhanced cooperation, while the negative incentives are those of noncooperation, harassment, obstruction, or destruction. Negative incentives are the losses that the high-power group, or haves, expect to experience as a consequence of a power struggle with the low-power group, or havenots. As Alinsky has pointed out: “The basic tactic in warfare against the Haves is a mass political jujitsu: the Have-Nots do not rigidly oppose the Haves, but yield in such planned and skilled ways that the superior strength of the Haves become their own undoing” (1971, p. 152). As in physical jujitsu, the inertia, momentum, and imbalance of the adversary are used as weapons against him. Thus, as Alinsky further suggests, “Since the Haves publicly pose as the custodians of responsibility, morality, law and justice (which are frequently strangers to each other), they can be constantly pushed to live up to their own book of morality and regulations. No organization, including organized religion, can live up to the letter of its own book.” Alinsky cites many examples of tactics in which bureaucratic systems were ensnarled in their own red tape by pressuring them to live up to their own formally stated rules and procedures. Tactics of this sort may center upon demanding or using a service that one is entitled to, a service that is not ordinarily used so massively and that the institution is not prepared to provide a large volume of, with excessive cost to itself. For example, banks may be disrupted by a massive opening and closing of accounts, department stores by massive return of purchases, airports by a massive use of their toilets and urinals by visitors, and so forth. Or the tactics may center upon disobedience to a rule or law that cannot be enforced in the face of massive noncompliance. Thus, landlords cannot afford to throw out all tenants who refuse to pay rents in a cohesive rent strike nor can schools dismiss all students who disobey an obnoxious regulation if the students are united in their opposition.

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Related to the tactic of clubbing the haves with their own book of rules and regulations is the tactic of goading them into errors such as violating their own rules or regulations. If they can be provoked into an obvious disruption of their own stated principles, then segments of the high-power group may become disaffected with the resultant weakening of the haves. In addition, previously neutral third parties may in response to the violations by those in power swing their sympathies and support to the have-nots. In general, it is a mistake to think that a high-power group is completely unified. Most groups have internal divisions and conflict among its most active members, and further, only a small proportion of its members are likely to be active supporters of current policy. The conflicts among those who are active in the high-power groups and the distinction between active and passive members provide important points of leverage for the have-nots. The internal conflict can be exacerbated by fostering mutual suspicion and by playing one side against the other. The passive compliance of the inactive majority of the haves may disappear as their leaders are provoked into errors and as they are subject to ridicule and embarrassment by their inability to cope effectively with the persisting harassments and nuisances caused by the have-nots. The power of the haves, as is true for any group, depends upon such tangibles as control over the instruments of force, an effective communication system, and an effective transportation system and upon such intangibles as prestige and the aura of invincibility. Although a low-power group may not be able to interfere seriously with the tangible bases of power of the haves without engaging in illegal, destructive actions of sabotage, it has many legal means of tarnishing and weakening their intangible sources of power. Ridicule and techniques of embarrassment are most effective weapons for this purpose. Here, as elsewhere, inventiveness and imagination play an important role in devising effective tactics. Alinsky, a master at inventing such tactics, illustrates with the following hypothetical example: Imagine the scene in the U. S. Courtroom in Chicago’s recent conspiracy trial of the seven if the defendants and counsel had anally trumpeted their contempt for Judge Hoffman and the system. What could Judge Hoffman, the bailiffs, or anyone else do? Would the judge have found them in contempt for farting? Here was a tactic for which there was no legal precedent. The press reaction would have stunk up the judge for the rest of time. (1971, p. 141)

Other tactics of embarrassment and ridicule include picketing slum landlords, key stockholders and management personnel of recalcitrant firms, and other such wielders of power in situations that are embarrassing to them—at their homes, at their churches or synagogues, or at their social clubs, for example. The advantage of such tactics as ridicule and embarrassment is that they are often very enjoyable for those in low power and very difficult for those in high power to cope with without further loss of face. In the preceding several pages, I have discussed some of the strategies and tactics available to low-power victimized groups in their attempt to compel a resistant highpower group to agree to a change in their relations. My discussion was meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive. It was also intended to indicate that apathetic resignation and destructiveness are not the only responses available in the face of a

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contrary authority. It is possible to increase the power of the have-nots by developing their personal resources, social cohesion, and social organization so that they have more influence. And in jujitsu fashion, it is possible for the have-nots to employ some of the characteristics of the haves to throw them off balance and to reduce their effective opposition. Let me sum up the discussion of activating the sense of injustice in the victim. I have suggested that the process basically entails falsifying and delegitimizing the officially sanctioned ideologies and myths that “justify” the injustices; exposing the victim to new ideologies, new models, and new reference groups that justify and give life to the possibilities of a change in his status; stimulating hope by successful efforts to improve his situation; and reducing fear by increasing his relative bargaining strength.

Conditions for Awakening the Sense of Injustice in the Victimizer Melvin J. Lerner (1980), in a very interesting paper, has asked a key question: given the weight of research evidence that demonstrates that considerations of justice and deserving play an important role in our lives, how then is it possible to explain why we tolerate injustice toward innocent victims in our community, society, and world? The research evidence to which he refers comprises a variety of ingenious experiments by social psychologists during the past decade, which show in many ways that people seek justice for others as well as for themselves. In response to his important question of why there is failure to act on the behalf of victims, Lerner proposed several answers: (1) the victimizer may find justification for thinking that the victim deserves his fate, (2) he may think that the victim’s situation is improving and equity will soon be established, (3) he believes that he is doing all he can without making himself into a victim, and (4) he believes that he is doing as much as can be expected of him, equal to or more than others who should be doing at least as much as he. Several additional answers that can be suggested are (5) the victimizer is ignorant of the injustice experienced by the victim because of his lack of contact with victims, (6) he thinks that the situation is hopeless so that nothing adequate can be done to redress and alleviate the victim’s situation, (7) he excludes the victim from his definition of the community in which his moral standards are applied, (8) he may fear that he may be humiliated or harmed by the victim or by other victimizers if he acts favorably toward the victim, and (9) he may feel that his personal interests and the interests of the victimized are directly opposed. The opposition may be in terms of external, material interests or it may reflect the victimizer’s psychological needs. He may have the need to feel superior or the need to deny any evil in himself by projecting it onto and attacking the victim. In addition, of course, he may not believe in a just world, believing instead that man is inherently amoral: those on top will always take advantage of those on the bottom; the victims would be victimizers if they had the chance.

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This list of reasons why victimizers may fail to act on the behalf of victims is, in effect, a catalog of the obstacles and resistances to activating their sense of injustice. How can they be overcome? Basically, the process of activating the sense of injustice in the victimizer is similar to that of activating it in the victim. It entails removing the victimizer’s ignorance of the injustices experienced by the victim through education and contact with the victim; falsifying and delegitimizing the officially sanctioned ideologies and myths that “justify” the injustices through education and governmental action; exposing the victimizer to new ideologies, new models, and new reference groups that support action to undo the disadvantages of the victims; stimulating his hope that he can act effectively to reduce injustice; reducing his fear that his new actions will have costly, harmful consequences for him at the same time that one enhances his prospect of material and psychic gains from a positive change in his relationship with the victim; and increasing his belief that continuation of his old relationship will no longer produce the material benefits or psychic gains he has experienced in the past from it and that its continuation may have costly, harmful consequences for him. It is apparent that those victimizers who are content with their superior roles and who have developed a vested interest in preserving the status quo and appropriate rationales to justify it will have to have their interests challenges and their rationalizations exposed as false before their sense of justice will be activated. (My earlier discussion of increasing the bargaining power of the victim is relevant here.) However, even if the victimizer understands how unjust the situation of the victim is and desires to remedy it, he is not likely to be activated to do something unless he sees the possibility of taking actions that will contribute significantly to correcting the injustice. Even then he is unlikely to act if he thinks that by so doing he will place himself in economic or social jeopardy. Fear and lack of hope are two central obstacles to activating the sense of injustice among even well-disposed and well-informed victimizers. Once victimization has become deeply embedded in social institutions, individual action to overcome it is frequently seen to be futile and costly. Institutionalized racism persists in the United States despite the very substantial reduction of prejudice among individual whites in all segments of the U. S. population in recent years. The doctrine of white superiority has lost its appeal for the typical white. The pervasive victimization of blacks still occurs because it is the natural consequence of a competitive ethos of every man (or group) for himself under rules that assume that competitors start more or less at the same initial point. It is evident that blacks, as a result of their legacy from slavery and a century of discrimination, are more likely to be poor, uneducated, ill, unstable, criminal, and otherwise “socially undesirable” in terms of middle-class standards than are whites. As a consequence, blacks are likely to be poorer “risks” as employees, tenants, borrowers, students, and law-abiding citizens. Employers, landlords, banks, stores, teachers, and the police—even if they are acting purely in terms of economic selfinterest—are apt to discriminate against those they consider to be poor risks. Not to do so would place them at a competitive disadvantage or expose them to the possibility of danger or failure. Moreover, others who are affected by their decisions,

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such as other employees, other tenants, shareowners, and so on, are likely to protest if the risks are taken since they are apt to feel they would be adversely affected. In addition, the American myth of equal opportunity provides a rationale for discriminating against those who are poor risks. In the land of equal opportunity, poverty must be due to the deficient character and motivation of those who are poor. Thus, self-interest, social pressure, and ideology combine to perpetuate the victimization of those who are poor risks. Even if a victimizer, with a keen sense of injustice, were able to perceive the self-fulfilling prophecy in discriminating against poor risks, he might nevertheless consider it a futile, hopeless gesture to disregard the common beliefs about the greater riskiness of transactions with blacks. Doing so would not make a significant impact upon the situation of the blacks unless many other whites were also engaged in similar actions. Moreover, failure—a housing development tipping so that it becomes all black, nonpayment of loans, and so on—would make his action demonstrate to others that nondiscrimination is unwise. It has long been recognized that without governmental action to pass and enforce laws to prohibit racial discrimination, the unbiased landlord or employer would find it difficult to survive unless he conformed to the practices of his business rivals and also discriminated. More recently, it has also begun to be recognized that if discrimination is against the poor (as in the zoning regulations of many suburbs or the inadequately supported schools in poor districts) or against those who are poor risks (as in the case of inadequately prepared high school graduates seeking admission to college), then many blacks will remain disadvantaged despite strict enforcement of laws prohibiting racial discrimination. Here too, governmental action is necessary to spread costs and risks equitably so that those who have an active sense of injustice are not themselves unduly disadvantaged by working to aid the disadvantaged. From what I have stated, it follows that the focus of attention and activity of the victimizer who wishes to remove the injustices suffered by the victim should be directed at other victimizers. He should seek to stimulate concerted action to ban racial discrimination and to enforce positive compliance with such bans. In addition, since elimination of racial discrimination will not eliminate discrimination against the poor or against poor risks, he should be trying to develop collective programs of action to achieve these ends. It has been a too common assumption of victimizers (even those of good will), as well as of many social scientists, that the social pathology has been in the ghetto rather than in those who have built the walls to surround it, that the disadvantaged are the ones who need to be changed rather than the people and the institutions who have kept the disadvantaged in a submerged position. It is not that we should detach ourselves from Head Start, Vista, and other useful training and remedial programs for the disadvantaged. Rather, we should have an appropriate perspective on such programs. It is more important to change educational institutions and economic and political systems so that they will permit those groups who are now largely excluded from important positions of decision making to share power than to try to inculcate new attitudes and skills in those who are excluded. After all, would we not expect that the educational achievements of black children would be higher than they are

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now if school boards had more black members and schools had more black principals? Would we not also expect that the occupational attainment of blacks would be higher (and their unemployment rate lower) if General Motors, AT&T and General Electric had black board members and company presidents as well as white ones?

Some Considerations in Instigating Social Change I shall not elaborate here my views on social action necessary to end racism. My views are hardly unique. In essence, I suggest that we need vigorous enforcement of existing legislation and, if necessary, new legislation to obtain positive compliance with nondiscrimination policies in all areas of community life. These legal actions should be supplemented by a continuing educational effort in the schools and in the mass media, as well as by governmental leaders, to support favorable attitudes toward positive compliance. In addition, we need economic policies that will foster full employment and substantially increase the share of the total national income that is received by those in the bottom third of the income distribution. And last, we need policies to provide remedial and other help, as well as a decent minimum income, for those who are unable to work. It is evident that the attempt to effect such policies will stimulate conflict and that such policies will be adopted only as the result of productive social conflict. Some common sense truisms about social conflict have been supported by social science research, and these are worth bearing in mind. Consider this well-established proposition: any attempt to introduce a change in the existing relationship between two parties is more likely to be accepted if each expects some net gain from the change than if either side expects that the other will gain at his expense. One obvious implication is that a redistribution of income so that there is an increase in the relative share received by blacks is more likely to be accepted by whites if their absolute income also increases. In other words, when the total income pie is increasing, changing the relative shares is easier. This, of course, means that a policy of economic growth rather than the one of no growth advocated by some ecologists is more favorable to the disadvantaged. There are other implications of this proposition. Those white who are not content or are only barely content with their share of the income pie are most likely to feel threatened by any relative gains by blacks. These are the poor whites and the bluecollar and other workers who feel that they are just making it financially. If they can be led to recognize that policies that will improve the situation of blacks will also improve their situation, they are more likely to be supporters than opponents of such policies. They are more likely to recognize this if the policies being advocated are cast in broad populist terms rather than in terms of narrow group interests. And, of course, if they see themselves as forming a coalition against a third party (“the rich”), they are more apt to perceive the congruence of their interests. Another implication of this proposition is that the employment of intimidating, coercive tactics in pursuit of one’s objective is likely to suggest an opposition rather than a complementarity of interests and, as a consequence, to provoke resistance. If

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concessions imply a loss of face, a humiliation, a loss of legitimacy, a loss of selfrespect, they are not likely to be made. On the other hand, tactics that emphasize the gains to the other—even if these gains are primarily nonmaterial (such as prestige, moral rectitude, respect, or the power to elicit authentic cooperation)—are more likely to lead to agreement. The power of a victimized minority to compel social change by itself is limited. It can rarely afford to be without allies. To be effective, it must be for others as well as for itself. Being for oneself is the first responsibility of every person and every group: unless one is for oneself, others are not likely to be. However, one can define being for oneself so that one is either for or against others. As a permanent definition of self, the latter is inherently self-defeating for a group that needs allies.

References Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswick, E., Levenson, D. J., & Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality. New York: Harper and Row. Alinsky, S. (1971). Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals. New York: Random House. Bales, R. F. (1970). Personality and interpersonal behavior. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. Bay, C. (1967). Political and apolitical students: Facts in search of a theory. Journal of Social Issues, 23, 76–91. Campbell, A. (1971). White attitudes toward black people. Ann Arbor: Institute for Social Research. Crosby, F. (1982). Relative deprivation and working women. New York: Oxford University Press. Davies, J. C. (1962). Toward a theory of revolution. American Sociological Review, 27, 5–19. De Tocqueville, A. (1947). L’ancien regime. (M. W. Patterson, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell (original work published 1856). Deutsch, M. (1968). Field theory in social psychology. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M., & Krauss, R. M. (1965). Theories in social psychology. New York: Basic Books. Edelman, P. (1971). Politics as symbolic action: Mass arousal and acquiescence. Chicago: Markham. Fenichel, O. (1945). The psychoanalytic theory of the neuroses. New York: Norton. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117–140. Freud, A. (1937). The ego and the mechanisms of defense. London: Hogarth. Grier, W. H., & Cobbs, P. M. (1968). Black rage. New York: Basic Books. Gurr, T. R. (1970). Why men rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum. Lewin, K. (1935). Psychological problems of a minority group. Character and Personality, 3, 175–187. Pettigrew, T. (1964). A profile of the Negro American. Princeton: Van Nostrand. Pettigrew, T. (1967). Social evaluation theory: Convergences and applications. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Runciman, W. C. (1966). Relative deprivation and social justice. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tajfel, H. (1982). Social identity and intergroup relations. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 8

Awakening Injustice in a New Century Brett G. Stoudt, Madeline Fox, and Michelle Fine

For Mort Deutsch, justice is a political vision, a theoretical field, a way of teaching and being in the world. We write as the intellectual children and grandchildren of Mort, who have taken up his commitment to justice studies as a line of inquiry. For us, Mort’s thinking about distributive injustice expands to consider how the right to research injustice is distributed unevenly. So we work with participatory action research (PAR) collectives in prisons, schools, and communities, where we cultivate the distinct knowledges born in conditions of oppression and those spun in privilege. By bringing together research collectives of varied expertise, what Maria Elena Torre (2005) calls “contact zones,” we craft new questions about injustice, spawn new theoretical formulations, and design new research that can document the impact of social policy on lives and also support the efforts of social movements. By so doing, we challenge traditional conceptions of objectivity in psychology. We agree with Donna Haraway’s (1988) critical views of what she has referred to as the God’s eye view of objectivity; the belief that the view from afar or above is more true than the view from below. Our work relies instead on her conceptualization of strong objectivity, by which distinctly situated perspectives engage in deliberations about research and action, with intentionality, toward not-yet-imagined forms of justice for redistribution and recognition (Deutsch, 1975; Young, 1990). We bring strong objectivity, through diverse PAR collectives, to questions of injustice and critical consciousness. In particular, we bring these theoretical, epistemological, and methodological commitments to the question of privilege. We have come to appreciate that expertise, knowledge, wisdom, desire, and capacity are widely distributed, but legitimacy is not. We import Mort’s thinking about justice into questions of epistemology and methods of PAR (for examples of our projects see Fox & Anderson, 2010; Fine & Torre, 2006; Stoudt, Kuriloff, Reichert, & Ravitch, 2010) into elite private schools, maximum security prisons, community based organizations, and contact zones where youth who carry multiple generations of privilege and multiple generations of disenfranchisement re-invent B.G. Stoudt (B) Department of Psychology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York, NY 10019, USA e-mail: [email protected] 165 P.T. Coleman (ed.), Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice, Peace Psychology Book C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8_8, 

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a public science for documenting and contesting the radically uneven distributions of human rights, material resources, economic and social opportunities, the right to engage in research, and the experience of being treated with dignity. In this chapter we track the lineage of Mort’s theoretical concept known as Awakening the Sense of Injustice (Deutsch, 1974) through our contemporary participatory research projects on critical consciousness and activism, among privileged and oppressed youth, living in a nation and globe littered with extremes of material and psychic privilege and insecurity. We demonstrate the ways that this approach, what we call public democratic science, unveils and provokes critical consciousness and action among those long marginalized and, most important for the purposes of this chapter, those long privileged. We consider PAR the methodological ally to Mort’s theoretical work on Awakening a Sense of Injustice.

Democratic Science for Awakening a Sense of Injustice The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) was founded in 1936 as an organization for researchers interested in applying the methods of their social science to address society’s most critical issues. These were/are researchers of action focused on strengthening democracy and democratic participation towards peace. In 1946, Krech edited an issue in the Journal of Social Issues entitled “Action and Research: A Challenge.” In these articles, values of social justice were explicit and a sense of urgency was present. Krech (1946) urged: Social research workers. . .must demonstrate enough faith in the scientific method to abandon their traditional caution. The social scientist must give up his fear of promising too much, for the world does not have the time to permit the social scientist the luxury of caution. If the research worker believes in science, if he is seriously concerned about social survival, now is the time for him to demand of men of action that they support the science of action. (p. 3–4).

In the same edited issue, Russell (1946) identified social science as “oil for the lamps of democracy” while Lippitt (1946) wrote of a method conducive to democracy: There is a third approach to measurement which in the future we believe will be seen more and more as a basic aspect of democratic group life. This is a situation where one of the methods of change of group life being used is the training of the group members, or a subgroup of the group, in techniques of studying and evaluating its own group processes. For group members to participate in the objective role of fact finding has been found to be one of the most effective attitude changing techniques. (p. 58)

Sixty-four years ago, the authors in this issue, like the members of SPSSI, imagined a social science for justice and action; to reveal forgotten alternatives and provoke a sense of what could be. A science organized not through ideology or prior answers, but projects of inquiry that lift up for consideration structures and practices of inclusion and redistribution not yet imagined. They described what we call today participatory action research and argue that the critical consciousness, the

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awareness, the awakening a sense of injustice that can emerge from this process is necessary to the health of our democracy and social justice for the collective. In this same 1946 issue of the Journal of Social Issues described above, Kurt Lewin (recognized as the founder of modern social psychology and a friend, adviser, and mentor to Mort Deutsch) published what was to become a seminal piece entitled, “Action Research and Minority Problems.” The unbalanced distribution of power in group dynamics and the connectedness of individuals in systemic relationships led him to recognize the importance of a social science that engages with institutional privilege. He wrote, “In recent years we have started to realize that socalled minority problems are in fact majority problems, that the Negro problem is the problem of the white, that the Jewish problem is the problem of the non-Jew, and so on (p. 44).” In Lewin’s article we can locate the seeds of Awakening a Sense of Injustice that Deutsch cultivated 30 years later. We are delighted to place ourselves in this social science lineage and anchor ourselves to these values. Though the times have changed, many of SPSSI’s social concerns about inequality gaps, colonization, discrimination and varied forms of gender, class, race, and geographic oppression persist. PAR in the 21st century signals a radical commitment to democraticizing who has the right and the opportunity to ask questions about injustice, launch research projects, interrogate social conditions, and to inquire critically about what is and what could be. PAR is grounded in a long tradition of social psychological research dating back to the origins of the field and linking researchers across countries and continents (Torre, Fine, Stoudt, & Fox, forthcoming). At its core, PAR engages the critical use of research in collaboration with community members to better understand and improve their own communities. An epistemological stance to social inquiry, PAR insists on democratic participation at every phase of research. Together with co-researchers, we read social theory, craft research questions of theoretical and political import, develop a palette of meaningful methods, conduct the research, analyze the data, and organize actions or interventions that are suggested by the findings. PAR positions itself in alliance with those who are disadvantaged by our social structures and institutions; documenting, challenging, and acting to change social conditions as they are experienced by individuals discriminated against and/or marginalized from the mainstream (Cammarota & Fine, 2008; Fine & Torre, 2004; Torre & Ayala, 2009). Our PAR projects also involve individuals from relatively privileged groups. We refuse to engage an essentialism of “what is affected by injustice” and “who remains outside,” by recognizing we are all engaged, even if some pay a far more severe price than others. Through Deutsch, we have taken up the challenge of PAR to provoke a sense of injustice among those who can afford to ignore the pain and decay in our midst; among those too privileged to notice, those who believe they are simply witnesses to, rather than implicated in, the reproduction of injustice. In the original publication of Awakening (1974), Deutsch addressed the complex political, social, and psychological dynamics that shape the differential sensitivity to injustice embodied by “victims” and “victimizers.” Sensitivity to injustice, he asked us to consider, not simply cognitions, attitudes, or behaviors but affect, disposition,

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tolerance, soul, and willingness to act in resistance. Drawing on Kurt Lewin and Anna Freud, Deutsch offered a social psychological analysis of Black-White racial relations. He systematically posed significant questions about the conditions under which victims and victimizers name injustice. He courageously opened the door to more contentious questions about when victims identify with the aggressor, and when victimizers identify with the plight of the “underdog.” Always carving new theoretical grounds, Deutsch (1974) recognized that within social sciences, the “discussion of injustice. . .ha[d] centered almost exclusively on the victim’s sense of injustice” (50). In this essay he insisted on writing at the analytic traffic jam where victims and victimizers knot up in each others’ lives, ever attentive to power and its intimacies. Theorizing the dialectics of oppression, he sought to excavate the conditions under which victims and victimizers might legitimate injustice, tangled in a collusive justification of inequity. But he also dug deep to understand the conditions under which victims and victimizers might critically assess the very social formations that have respectively oppressed and benefitted them. He dichotomized the analysis into victims and victimizers; a move we assume he would not re-make today. With an eye on victims, Deutsch draws on Lewin’s theory of relative deprivation, arguing that victims will be aroused to outrage when they experience relative deprivation and “perceive a discrepancy between what a person obtains and what he believes he is entitled to in the distribution of goods and harms” (Deutsch, 1974, 51). He writes that social ideology, social comparisons, experienced changes, and bargaining power shape one’s sense of entitlement. With shades of W.E.B. Du Bois and Sigmund Freud, Deutsch tells us that for subordinated groups, given the psychic, economic, and potentially deadly costs of rebellion, “discontent and the sense of injustice may be latent rather than manifest” (Deutsch, 1974, 56). Consciousness raising, he argues, may be necessary to rupture lack of hope or the sense of inevitability that accompany sustained disadvantage. Turning to victimizers, Mort acknowledges “a catalog of obstacles and resistances to activating their sense of injustice” (Deutsch, 1974, 59). And yet he queries, “How can they be overcome?” Here we learn that awakening victimizers from the slumber of complacency: Can be facilitated through contact with the victim; through education and governmental action that falsifies and delegitimizes the officially sanctioned ideologies and myths that justify the injustices; and through exposing the victimizers to new ideologies, new models, and new reference groups that support action to undo the disadvantages of the victim. The motivational aspects can be addressed by stimulating hope that one can be effective in reducing injustice and by reducing one’s fear that new actions will have costly and harmful consequences. They can also be addressed by enhancing the prospect of material and psychic gains from a positive change in the relationship with the victim; and by increasing the belief that continuation of the old relationship will no longer produce the material benefits or psychic gains experienced in the past and further that its continuation may have consequences that are personally costly. (Deutsch & Steil, 1988, 20)

A man with the juices of cooperation and a passion for justice running through his veins, Deutsch concludes the article with an eye on social change, warning that

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“any attempt to introduce a change in the existing relationship between two parties is more likely to be accepted if each expects some net gain from the change than if either side expects that the other will gain at his expense” (Deutsch, 1974, 62).

Democratic Science to Awaken Elites and “Bystanders” from the Slumber of Complacency Our research stands on the shoulders of Deutsch’s writings. We honor his work and believe that being awake and provoking a state of awareness are not only obligations of democracy but are also responsibilities of social theory and method. In our work, we have taken Deutsch at his word, and moved the project of “awakening a sense of injustice” across zip codes, into privileged communities and prisons, schools and youth groups. We have labored over what it means to awaken theoretically, methodologically, and politically. We use the remainder of this essay to explore the social psychology of “awakening” in two research projects focused on the question of awakening a sense of injustice among elites. The Rockford Bullying Study is situated in a setting of rarefied privilege, Rockford School, where wealthy adolescent boys attend a single-sexed private school in one of the wealthiest communities in America. The reproduction of structural violence, in the language of Bourdieu (2001), occurs between the school and the rest of society and also, in microcosm, within the school, where the PAR project was situated. The second study, Polling for Justice, involves a youth and adult created survey of 1000+ NYC youth on their experiences of (in)justice in education, healthcare, and criminal justice. We focus particularly on an analysis of how relatively privileged audiences who are “bearing witness” can be provoked to action in collaboration with youth living lives scarred by poverty, marginalization, and neo-liberal social policies. In both instances, we take seriously Deutsch’s heed to awaken among elites and those of us who think we are just watching. Across these two projects we interrogate how critical consciousness and responsibility can be awakened among those who believe they are unaffected by social injustice. That is, across these two very differently situated research studies, we track four social psychological moves of awakening: 1. Naming and mapping uneven distributions of opportunities, dignity, and/or outcomes. 2. De-naturalizing the inequitable distribution as unjust rather than deserved or inevitable. 3. Making visible the interdependence and circuits of oppression and privilege among elites, witnesses, and those most adversely affected by social arrangements. 4. Engaging action research as a collective strategy to provoke a sense of responsibility toward social change.

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The Rockport Bullying Study Deutsch (1974) argued that we too often focus on the victims rather than the victimizers. He wrote in Awakening: It has been a too common assumption of victimizers (even those of good will), as well as of many social scientists, that the social pathology has been in the ghetto rather than in those who have built the walls to surround it, that the disadvantaged are the ones who need to be changed rather than the people and the institutions who have kept the disadvantaged in a submerged position. (p. 61)

In this section we will substitute the term “victimizer” for the term “privilege.” The list of privileges that accrue to most of the students of Rockport, at minimum, include being White, wealthy, boys attending an elite private school. Researching people and institutions that are privileged may seem counterintuitive for justice scholars. The students of Rockport are the benefactors of social structures set up for them to succeed. However, as Deutsch reminds us, privilege is not examined enough and in fact, the absence of this critical gaze helps to make normal, invisible, and natural the social structures that advantage a few at the cost of many. Our democracy grows increasingly dire to the extent that privileged persons benefit from injustice and remain unconscious to its implications. Thus, we are quite interested in a sense of injustice and responsibility within sites of privilege, as well as within communities that have been systematically disadvantaged. Documenting Civilized Oppression Within and Beyond Privilege: The Rockport Bullying Study involved a faculty research team and a student research team from the Upper School of Rockport; an elite private school educating mostly White, economically advantaged boys. The faculty research team was made up of two White teachers named Mary and Sara as well as two White college counselors named Jill and Greg. The student research team was made up of four senior White boys named Paul, Steve, John, and Dave. The work by faculty and student researchers described in this section lasted one school year, August to June, and was conducted in close partnership with the first author of this article and the Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives (CSBGL).1 Together, the student and faculty researchers set out to examine the ways that bullying was performed at Rockport, its socio-emotional connection to masculine privilege, and ultimately how it contributed to civilized oppression (Harvey, 1999) within and beyond Rockport. With a school wide survey and interviews with faculty, we crafted a design that could analyze bullying as a cultural phenomenon across levels of status within the school. The student researchers identified four types of verbal and physical bullying, which they defined broadly as ridiculing/teasing, bullying/intimidation,

1 The Center for the Study of Boys and Girls (CSBGL) supports an ongoing consortium of independent schools throughout the country to conduct research and facilitate critical discussion on behalf of boys and girls.

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hazing/initiations, and fighting/physical violence. They created an instrument using a range of closed and open-ended questions designed to address the complex and relational experiences of bullying at Rockport. They collected a sample of 96 classmates in 9th through 12th grade. Faculty researchers then developed an interview protocol based on the student researchers’ broad conceptual understanding of bullying. The faculty research team conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 faculty colleagues (7 males and 3 females; 8 teachers and 2 administrators). In addition, faculty interviewees were asked to react to some of the data collected by student researchers. Student and faculty researchers not only worked with CSBGL to develop and carry out the methods, they also collaborated to analyze the collected data together. To communicate with a broad range of the Rockport community, the student and faculty researchers collectively used a series of methods that sought out representative voices from at least three institutional levels: the students, faculty, and administrators. While the full data and critical reflections on PAR within privilege can be found elsewhere (Stoudt, 2007, 2009; Stoudt et al., 2010), in this section we will use the conversations student and faculty researchers had as they grappled with these layers of data and their own experiences as victims, victimizers, and witnesses to bullying. Labels in parentheses are included throughout the text to help readers identify quotes: SR = student researcher; FR = faculty researchers; AD = administrators. Naming Bullying as an Injustice of Dignity: Our initiative at Rockport to study bullying emerged locally from ongoing research with faculty inside Rockport. Bullying as a research topic was institutionally relevant because it straddled multiple, sometimes strongly competing interests. Had the work not been conducted inside the institution with community members from the institution on a topic that was institutionally interesting, it is doubtful whether such intimate access would have been granted or the work well received. As a result, the study helped to awaken for students and faculty the broad and often hidden ways that bullying was performed at Rockport. The study also held strong implications for the pursuit of social justice as we revealed the socio-political capacity of bullying to exclude and censure, to impose power and build hierarchy, and reproduce privilege. Acts of bullying at Rockport were often neither arbitrary nor neutral. At the institutional level, bullying was connected to a highly competitive culture focused on elite college admittance and a mission to educate for privilege and power where preparing boys to thrive in competitive, capitalistic environments may necessitate becoming comfortable with social aggression. At the interpersonal level, bullying for students was an expression of masculinity that conveyed power and established hierarchy. In practice, this tended to represents what Cudd (2006) suggested are the foundations to oppression and what Harvey (1999) described as civilized oppression. As both recipients and representatives of their institution, bullying was often used by students and sometimes faculty to police the “acceptable” hegemonic boundaries of Rockport (and the larger culture) in ways that potentially reproduced, made invisible, normalized and justified structural privileges. For example, Greg (FR) explained:

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I mean it sounds not like a revelation and all but I guess to me initially it was. I guess someplace early on you have to dispel the notion that bullying is just physical. Because I think if we asked anybody 9 out of 10 people are going to say there is no bullying. I’ve never seen anybody pushed out into the Avenue. . .because the subtleness here and it’s so intrinsic in our culture here that people say they don’t recognize it as bullying. I didn’t until we started having this conversation but yeah it is.

Bullying was not a break in the culture of Rockport but an expression of it; emerging out of and then also contributing back to a strong local hegemonic institutional community, a larger hegemonic culture, and ultimately the continuing reproduction of oppressive structures. This made the study of bullying at Rockport an important topic to pursue in the name of social justice. Denaturalizing Civilized Oppression: To name or contest bullying as a practice of privilege was risky within Rockport. The faculty researchers strongly agreed that “speaking out against the school or against whatever wrong has been done to you is such a risk on so many different levels.” Mary (FR) admitted, “We are really prevented from speaking to each other” to the point where “we totally give up.” The system can shrink its community members into isolated spaces such as with Sara (FR) who explained, “Basically I just focus on what is going on in my classroom now. . .. The only way I get involved in school issues any more is if I’m doing something like this study.” The institution tends to reproduce the status quo unless the considerable barriers that exist among students and faculty to voice concerns and act upon those concerns are lifted or opened. Opportunities to awaken a sense of injustice occurred initially in delicate, sheltered spaces throughout the work at Rockport – from the very framing of the project, to co-creating the survey instrument and interview protocol, to collecting and analyzing the data, to writing reports and presenting in front of local audiences. PAR, working within the confines of the institution, opened up new avenues to talk about under-spoken issues and bridge the desires of community members who wished to effect needed change. Our collaborative research also challenged community members to confront and develop further their common, sometimes mistaken, often buried assumptions in ways that were meaningful. Take for example, the dialogue below of the youth researchers using the data to discuss the way race was present at their school: Dave (FR): Actually the thing that was real interesting about that – I don’t know if it is bad to say or something – I interviewed an African-American kid and he didn’t label himself as African-American and I thought that was really weird. It’s like such a small group of kids at Rockport that are that. Brett: I think that is an interesting point because especially as White people we assume that the label [is always salient] John (SR): I also think from the standard that we don’t get much [from the data] that there’s race involved. Not too many stories of race being a big issue.

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Brett:

I felt that there were a lot of race issues that surprised me. Race where it was joking around. . .where it was calling someone “midnight” [referencing a quote from the data]. Paul (SR): Yeah Steve (SR): And also the jokes further confirm that it is acceptable. In these participatory spaces, the student researchers confronted those pieces of the data that conflicted with their own standpoints. In the discourse above, Dave (SR) thought it was unusual that a student of color did not self identify as African American. John (SR) was not sure we were receiving important data on race. This created a moment to pry open race, as students were closing up the issue; the research also created an opportunity to engage with some of the assumptions they were holding about White invisibility or White as the assumed standard. PAR in privileged contexts can become a lesson in civics, of democracy, of social responsibility, and reform. It can create a space to help us engage with the unspoken, speak what is off limits, make room for unresolved conflict, criticize the standard, and re-imagine social consciousness. PAR can do this but will not inherently do this without a firm grounding in a social justice ethic built out of, for example, the work of Kurt Lewin and Mort Deutsch. The youth we partnered with hold a substantial, inherited stake in the racialized, classed, and gendered structures of power and knowledge production. Economic and social structures have been set up for them to win. Their schools do not suffer from under funding as many public schools do. As a result, we worried about colluding with and reproducing privilege to the extent we were unsuccessful at: setting an expectation that we would talk about race/ethnicity, class, gender, and sexual identity (among others); drawing connections between or encouraging further discussion around these issues even when they did not emerge organically; pushing against the tendency of our conversations to reduce the importance of these issues; and even “teaching” them at necessary times about some of these issues. Shifting the Unit of Analysis to School Culture and Structural Injustices: The advantages gained from private schooling, class, and other institutional privileges (e.g. gender, race, sexual identity) can be masked by a false sense of merit; a sense of earned and therefore justified (expected) success linked to one’s personal attributes without recognizing how ones’ institutionalized advantages are linked with others’ disadvantages. Mary (FR) observed false merit, elitism, and entitlement among students at Rockport, “They always put down community college. . .It is so elitist. Our boys are so unaware of the fact that the reason they have all these amazing choices is that they have been handed so many advantages. If we were judging on merit they’d be damn lucky to be at community college.” Sara (FR) also observed the elitism of students in comparison to public schools, “They believe they are so much higher up than the public schools or anybody around here that they feel like the [college] competition for them are these kids in their classes.” As a business, Rockport markets itself in relationship to other schools; competing private schools but also with public schools. Private schools gain privilege by distinguishing themselves from the “less superior” education of the masses. Mike (AD)

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explained some of the differences; for example, the type of confidence a private school education cultivates in students: One of the things I once heard an employer say, he said like he could always tell independent schools – not college – but independent school kids from public school kids because at 24 years old they are hired and they are participating in meetings. Not because they’re arrogant but because it’s confidence. There is an expectation that you want to hear my voice, you want to hear my opinions, you want to hear what I have to say.

From Mike’s (AD) perspective, the differences drawn between what is cultivated in private schools as compared to, for example, urban public schools are not just a matter of better education but also differing values, “I wouldn’t go teach in the inner city for a long term. . .because I wouldn’t be comfortable in it. It would be a constant social battle with me trying to take values which I think are important and most likely work with those kids who generally come from different backgrounds.” The research created dialogue within the research group and then more broadly among students, faculty, and administrators about the normalized dominant institutional assumptions, about the embodiment of relational power and hierarchy, about intersectional identities and about the importance of context. The longitudinal and intensive nature of this work created spaces for the co-researchers (students and faculty) to gain a critical awareness of their systemic relationship to Rockport and the ways they were not only victims but also observers and contributors to it; developing (even if short lived) a sense of responsibility and structural shared fates. John (SR) made reference to the elitism cultivated at Rockport as compared “to like public school;” however, through our research he began to contest a sense of distorted values: On a basic level I think it is sort of that we – the Rockport School – is set at an elevation of high moral standards and it belongs to that idea that these aren’t like special people with high moral standards they are just everyday people like doing what everybody else does. It is the same exact type of people . . . to like public school.

The pervasiveness of bullying at Rockport made John (SR) question the privileged distinction so often made between pubic school and private school students. PAR created reflective spaces that helped John (SR) challenge the dominant institutional assumptions he and his peers were taught. What he concluded was, “these aren’t like special people with high moral standards they are just everyday people like doing what everybody else does. It is the same exact type of people.” Though only a moment, one hopes that John’s (SR) “scope of justice” expanded because of our collaborative work. The student researchers began with bullying lifted from the interpersonal dynamics and it took them to an understanding of structures, ideological practices, and collateral damage within and beyond Rockport. What we heard from both student and faculty researchers was an increased awareness of not just others’ experiences but also their own experiences. They are within a pervasive culture of bullying at Rockport but also contribute to that culture. The line between victim, victimizer, and witness grew blurry as the role of

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the bystander morphed into collusion. What seemed like “just a joke” was recast as unjust. For example, Steve (SR) conveyed, “I think the fact that most people recognize misbehavior amongst their peers is surprising and it seems like it has deeply affected them at some point or another in their high school career. I know like obviously this is how I am teasing.” And, after many hours of examining data suggesting that faculty and administrators both bullied students and also contributed to reproducing the hegemonic environment – the faculty researchers acknowledged that bullying was not only a student issue but it was everyone’s issue: Jill (FR): Sara (FR): Jill (FR):

Right, it’s a whole school thing. It’s a whole school culture thing. From headmaster on down... it is systemic.

The move from student level (and the deficit oriented assumptions that often are linked) to multiple levels of interwoven relationships supported within an institutional culture is an important counter-hegemonic step. It avoids reifying what has been status quo as well as resting the burden entirely on the backs of the least powerful individuals of the institution to either change or make change. The study awakened a sense of systemic injustice by working to prevent allowing community members to feel off the hook, to assume that it is someone else’s problem; it facilitated the acknowledgment of one’s contribution to the system. Awakening Uncomfortable Emotions: Shifting the analysis from bad boys to school culture and structural injustice can facilitate the acknowledgment of one’s contribution to the system. However, moving to systemic explanations where community members each share responsibility in the reproduction of, for example, school bullying can be emotionally distressing. Emotions like shame, distress, anger, and empathy can contribute powerfully to institutional change but also can sidetrack change and facilitate the reproduction of institutional privilege. In PAR within privileged settings, it is important to recognize and manage the awakening of uncomfortable emotions that will emerge as a result of personal and institutional reflection. In the same sequence where faculty researchers agreed that bullying is “a whole school culture thing,” Mary (FR) came to the conclusion that Rockport was a bad place – “this place is rotten” – founded on many bad values: My daughter watched her cousins go through here and her thesis about this was that the place is completely rotten. The people – that there are a bunch of rich drug addicts who are mean to each other and are completely rotten and I’m not sure she is entirely wrong. I love the school, I love the students but I remember when I first started teaching here in Lower School thinking this place was built on so many rotten assumptions about race and religion and class that I don’t know that you can clean it up. It’s like a toxic waste dump.

The task of taking on a systemic issue within an institution can be daunting, particularly when the co-researchers’ main professional concerns and energies lie elsewhere (e.g. teachers are concerned with teaching; students are concerned with

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getting into college). The uncomfortable feelings that arise from sharing the weight of responsibility – particularly for those students whose privileged advantages may have kept them unaware of their connections to other’s disadvantages – can generate a mending of, avoidance from, or reaction against their sense of culpability. In addition, dispersing culpability throughout the institution can outline a web of damage that appears too large and comprehensive for any small group of students and faculty to mend. Each of these, paradoxically, can work against motivation for counter-hegemonic change. When dialogue forces individuals to critically confront their own values and assumptions, Callan (2004) argued they will experience moral distress and necessarily so if citizens in a democracy are to be successfully educated. Boler (1999) would agree and further add that the “rules of emotional conduct and expression function to uphold the dominant culture’s hierarchies and values” not necessarily in forceful or violent ways “but by engineering our “consent” to this control” (p. xvii). She warned educators to be weary of a false sense of passive empathy and to embrace a “pedagogy of the discomfort” because emotional uneasiness, moral ambiguity, positional conflicts, and other forms of distress that are too quickly resolved (as is the tendency) can inhibit those very moments when personal moral insights and a sense of active empathy are most likely to develop. The engaged and supportive spaces created in participatory research collectives are able to draw attention to and facilitate a critical discussion around moral distress; a process that, if successful, avoids flattening the politics of emotion while also cultivating a sense that change is both a responsibility and a possibility. Awakening Responsibility for Cultural Change: The faculty researchers in particular seemed to articulate that the project, in both the process and outcomes, was a worthwhile learning experience. Mary (FR) reminded the group, “And faculty said, ‘I could be the bully and not even know it.’” Later in the discussion, Greg (FR) described the interview process “as a valuable experience in itself.” Sara (FR) also later concluded, “I really think the fact of me just doing this study has made me so much more aware of what I say, how I say it.” Faculty researchers such as Sara (FR) were able to transfer lessons from this work into their daily practices. Sara (FR) described her awakening to the subtle ways students bullied each other in her class, “I thought, this is exactly what this study is all about and it is happening right in front of me. I mean it was just amazing.” And yet, “It also made me feel guilty because. . .I know that there is stuff that happens like that all the time but I’m just grading papers, I’m filtering and I’m ignoring.” Learning from the research and then applying it in the classroom illustrates the potential of PAR to organically change the institution by re-imagining ways to interact within the community. While these learning experiences in a closed institution like Rockport were themselves a type of counter-hegemonic action, both the student and faculty researchers gained a sense of responsibility to share their research with the rest of Rockport. For example, Sara (FR) thought they should be “presenting what comes out of this study either at the beginning of faculty meetings next year or something. Just to

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show people listen, this is what kids have said that we are doing as faculty. [And] this is what our faculty had said about ourselves.” The project first helped the researchers and then the community members at large begin envisioning ways to interrupt some of the destructive practices the study uncovered across the school. “The Rockport Peer Interaction Study: Eat or Be Eaten” and “The White Noise of Teasing at Rockport School” were the titles of two presentations, one given by student researchers and the other by faculty researchers that summarized the year’s work. In these presentations, they imagined alternatives and outlined possibilities for intervention. Student researchers suggested such initiatives as “developing awareness and emotional intelligence in students” and a “town hall meeting” since “our data suggests that teasing/ridiculing is something that all of us have experienced or participated in to varying degrees.” They also reminded adults that “demeaning comments do in fact come from the teachers themselves from time to time” and asked “teachers to be more aware when teasing/ridiculing goes too far.” Faculty researchers also imagined alternatives and outlined possibilities for intervention. Faculty researchers coauthored a letter in response to the student researchers, which they read aloud as part of a presentation. Their letter promised to begin identifying and utilizing the complimentary institutional spaces already set up “such as Peer Leadership Counseling, Town Meetings, and our Upper School Advisory Program.” They agreed “to intervene through various initiatives within our community” including raising “the issue publicly in order to make students and faculty aware of the debate” and developing “methods of sensitizing the Rockport School community regarding this issue.” The process of PAR at Rockport was not without critique. However, over the course of a year, the student and faculty researchers collected compelling data of local consequence and in doing so, built institutional momentum that has since become a school-wide and longitudinal initiative to address bullying. Additional presentations were made internally at Rockport and at other conferences nationally and internationally. New faculty and students joined the Upper School project, while the Lower and Middle Schools developed research teams of their own to begin examining bullying. New threads of institutional conversation – such as critical dialogue about bullying, privilege, and masculinity – have become legitimate avenues for inquiry among students, faculty, and administrators at Rockport. Participatory action research engages democratic pedagogy and science. Beginning with a question, PAR scaffolds an opportunity to interrogate naturalized social stratifications and perform critical citizenship locally towards the redistribution of dignity and opportunity. The data suggested a series of processes that could be put in place, within school culture, to undo some of the normative, hegemonic masculine bullying – engaged by students and educators; by men and women. Although it is uncertain whether these efforts have or will lead to long-term sustainable change at Rockport, the actual process of conducting PAR within the institution, even if only momentarily, awakened both a sense of injustice and a responsibility to initiate change.

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Polling for Justice (PFJ) In contrast to and in conversation with Rockport, Polling for Justice (PFJ) is a participatory action research (PAR) project in which a research collective of youth and adults, from varied communities, came together to examine the extent to which urban youth (ages 14–21) experienced (in)justice across sectors of education, criminal justice, and health. Our focus was on low income youth of color; the work was launched across the five boroughs and three sectors of public life for youth in NYC. PFJ was not embedded in an institution – and certainly not a privileged one. But like Rockport, participation was at the heart of our research theory and design. We sought collaboratively to gather quantitative and qualitative data to inform human rights movements for youth, to effect public policy, and to support youth social advocacy across the city. We produced scholarly and activist, empirical and performative products: academic articles, political testimony, youth organizing pamphlets and, in the spirit of W.E.B. DuBois’ pageants, we developed a process for performing the evidence. In this section we will examine what it means to awaken a sense of injustice in audiences and readers of research. We will do this by exploring the political and theoretical implications of gathering participatory evidence on injustice and then performing that evidence. In the early spring of 2008, the adults and youth of PFJ embarked on designing a citywide survey. Noting the fraught political, social, and educational context for youth in the City, we were interested in amassing a public archive/database of youth knowledge and experiences to speak back to neo-liberal forces aimed at privatizing and/or cutting publicly funded resources. Recruited from youth organizations, schools, and via word of mouth, youth researchers in Polling for Justice came from public and private high schools all over New York City. They were diverse by race, ethnicity, socio-economic background, educational level, religion, sexuality, gender, disability, and immigration status. The forty youth, ages 14–21, represented a range of educational experiences: from push-outs to Advanced Placement classes, from detention rooms to student leadership. Alongside the forty young people were university faculty, graduate students, community organizers, and public health professionals; all gathered together to craft a collaborative investigation of youth experiences of public institutions in New York City. Each participant, youth and adult, chose a key issue to contribute expertise. We clustered around four main areas of inquiry. One multi-generational group developed questions on issues of education and schooling, another safety and violence, a third, youth experiences with the criminal justice system and the fourth focus was on public health. The research team as a whole consulted a range of expertise: youth from New York City – more knowledgeable than any about the daily experiences of their own lives – scholars from the academy, experts from the community, as well as findings from published studies. We sought to craft what Torre (2005) calls contact zones, working spaces where people from different backgrounds come together around mutual inquiry and through difference engage in knowledge production. In our research spaces, various kinds of expertise blended, clashed, and ultimately heightened the expert validity of the survey we collaboratively produced.

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The PFJ research process complicated traditional notions about where knowledge and expertise lie through four key moments. First, the process of collecting data awakened a sense of injustice across our research collective. Second, initial analysis of that data denaturalized and contextualized (in zip codes, institutions, public policies as enacted on the ground) our understanding of distribution and impact of injustice. Third, deeper analysis brought us to an understanding of injustice experiences as interdependent circuits. And fourth, through creative, performative dissemination of the findings, we made an effort to raise awareness of a collective sense of injustice and responsibility. Awakening a sense of injustice and denaturalizing the evidence: Over the span of a year, we collected a dataset of more than 1,000 New York City youth that described in detail particular contours of their everyday lives. The youth and adult researchers analyzed the survey data collaboratively. As data analysis began, we noted that survey respondents reported having high educational aspirations, feeling hopeful about the future, and caring about working with other young people to improve their communities. We also noted key issues of concern. For instance, to youth-generated survey items about interactions with police (like, “In the last 6 months: I was given a summons/ticket; I was arrested; I was threatened and/or called a name by the police, I was touched inappropriately by police, I was frisked (patted-down)), respondents reported uncomfortably high levels. The youth researchers knew intimately, from their own experiences, that youth had negative interactions with police. However, when we moved the data onto maps, our multi-generational research collective was not only able to see that individual experiences were shared collectively, but we were able to see how and who were more likely to bare the brunt of negative experiences with police. We noted a mismatch between the PFJ data showing youth desire to engage politically and productively with community, and what could be interpreted as “anti-social” behavior implied by high levels of negative interactions with police. The youth researchers wanted to know which particular young people were getting stopped, and where. Our first move was to overlay the data onto maps of New York City and then look at the mapped negative interactions with the police by race/ethnicity, gender, and sexual identity. We quickly saw that youth living in Brooklyn and the Bronx (see Fig. 8.1) as well as youth of color, and males and youth identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or questioning (LGBQ) (see Fig. 8.2), reported the highest rates of negative interactions with police. In a process of “awakening,” as we projected maps of New York City zip codes onto large screens in our research space, youth researchers made connections from the personal to the social, and identified their own neighborhoods in central Brooklyn and the south Bronx as having the highest concentration of negative interactions with police. They came to understand their own experiences as shared collectively. Observations like these led youth researchers and other members of our research collective to explore further; to continue to probe literature, interview judges and criminal justice theorists, test out theories, conduct data driven focus groups at the “hot spot” zip codes and generate new questions about how socio-economic status, race/ethnicity and/or skin

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Fig. 8.1 Percentage of survey respondents reporting negative police contact

color, and sexual identity were connected to higher rates of negative police interactions. We de-naturalized evidence, moving analysis beyond anecdotal experiences, off of individual adolescent young people and onto the systems and institutional policies that perpetuate problematic power relations and have negative repercussions for young people. Understanding injustice as circuits of dispossession and advantage: Continuing with our analysis, we noticed that some young people were more likely to have had multiple negative experiences across the policy sectors we examined. Negative experiences appeared to have the tendency to pile up in the daily lives of particular groups of young people, so that some more than others bore the brunt of inadequate public policies. In the U.S., public resources, opportunities, dignity, and therefore aspirations are being re-distributed by public policy. Youth of Color, those living in poverty, and youth who are immigrants are increasingly denied access to or detached from high quality public education and healthcare as their families and housing are destabilized. At the same time the government has invested in criminalization and surveillance in the name of “national security.” Referring to the theoretical work of David Harvey (2004) on dispossession by accumulation, in PFJ we studied the

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Fig. 8.2 LGBQ youth reporting negative police contact as compared with straight youth

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LGBQ = 87.5% Straight = 53.8% 33.7% pt. diff

LGBQ = 52.4% Straight = 35.0% 17.4% pt. diff LGBQ = 31.6% Straight = 44.7% 13.1% pt. diff

LGBQ = 69.0% Straight = 50.7% 18.3% pt. diff

accumulation of these social psychological experiences as circuits of dispossession (Fine & Ruglis, 2009) and advantage (Stoudt, Fox, & Fine, forthcoming). The landscape of dispossession stretches out unevenly across neighborhood and demographic groups. Highly dispossessed youth were more likely to live in high poverty NYC community districts. A greater proportion of Youth of Color were highly dispossessed as compared to White and Asian youth. A similar disproportionate relationship was found for sexual identity. Youth who identified as LGBQ were proportionally more likely to experience greater dispossession than youth who identified as straight. Boys were also more likely to experience greater accumulation of dispossession than girls. In other words, particular populations of young people were more likely to have negative experiences accumulate in school, with police, with family, and in relation to public health. Therefore, the public policies associated with these sectors distributed the burden disproportionally onto certain young people (Fine, Stoudt, Fox, & Santos, 2010). We also found that as negative experiences across sectors accumulated, youth were more likely to report participating in unsafe sexual practices, violence, and drug/alcohol use. Figure 8.3 displays the linear relationships between circuits of dispossession and risk taking behaviors. In fact, youth who were most highly dispossessed (group 4) were nearly six times more likely to engage with violence, more than four times more likely to engage in unsafe sex practices, and almost three

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Fig. 8.3 Circuits of dispossession by risk taking behaviors

times more likely to use illegal drugs than youth who did not report dispossession (group 0). Similarly, youth in the most dispossessed group (group 4) were twice as likely to report symptoms of clinical depression as compared to youth in the least dispossessed group (group 0). However, it is important to note that the relationship between dispossession and risk taking is not a perfect association. While 70% of the youth with the most cumulative dispossession (group 4) engaged in violence, 30% did not; 44% did not engage in unsafe sex practices, 42% did not use drugs, and 36% did not drink alcohol (Fine et al., 2010). Since all of the data were gathered using a cross-sectional design, we cannot determine cause and can only hypothesize the direction of these relationships. However, we felt it important to probe our data to explore the potential conditions that might help cushion the negative experiences of dispossession. We learned that involvement in youth organizations or deep connections with educators tended to act as buffers for some youth. That is, even though they were extremely vulnerable to policies that severed their relationship with secure housing, education, stable family relations, and healthcare, those youth who were able to attach to adults and youth in other settings were less likely to report high levels of clinical depression (Fine et al., 2010). Provoking a collective sense of injustice and responsibility: Unlike the adults, the youth researchers involved with collecting the data were not especially surprised by hearing some of the detailed results of our survey, like that young people reported high levels of negative interactions with police. When we shared the data with other NYC young people they told us: “We know this. We live it every day. What are

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you going to do about it?” Adults seemed affected, but they too reported having some prior knowledge of the realities we described.2 Even if familiar, we wanted our audiences to recognize that our data interrupted assumptions about “bad” adolescents deserving negative police attention; our evidence denaturalized the every day. We found our audiences adept at hearing research, nodding their heads with concern, but we wanted more than concern, more than empathy, we wanted them to do more than just listen. Boler (1999) cautions that empathic readings allow for a passive consumption of the subjects’ experiences/emotions without also having to examine the reader’s social responsibilities and connectivity to injustice. She calls instead for an active empathy, or a “testimonial reading”, where the responsibility for action lies with the reader. In PFJ, we theorized that adult audiences of privilege were also connected through circuits of dispossession and advantage; we felt a responsibility to disseminate analyses in such a way that made that circuitry visible and impossible to ignore. In part, the audiences of our research had been lulled into what Deutsch called a “slumber of complacency” (Deutsch, 1974) by constant media exposure, hyperaccess to information, and news sources providing daily coverage of youth as a domestic form of terrorism. We live in a globalized age where fear is capitalized on and the climate of insecurity is intensified by economic instability, heightened state surveillance, and fear mongering. The (orchestrated) climate of insecurity makes it less likely that people will organize collective resistance and more likely that problems are located on (other) individual bodies (Katz, 2008). Our multi-generational research collective decided that we needed a method for disseminating the findings of our research about circuits of dispossession in ways that awakened and engaged audiences. We turned to embodied and performed methodologies in part because we wanted to make explicit that the justice work and responsibility for action are held collectively in the bodies of both audience and performer, reader and researcher, adult and youth. The firewalls presumed between rich and poor/White and Youth of Color/LGBQ and straight are dangerous illusions produced by and for privilege. We turned to dramatic performance to create an environment that made visible the ways that experiences of adults and youth of privilege might counterweight experiences of low-income Youth of Color in New York City, and that these experiences are of-a-piece, connected to the circuitry of dispossession and advantage. Through drama and art, the PFJ researchers put theory on its feet and performed our findings on circuits of dispossession to move the work into the audience meaningfully – not as youth ventriloquy, but as intimate communication of the material and engagement with the audience. We used performance to denaturalize 2 We should note, that there were important exceptions to this. The aggregated data from the PFJ survey, reporting a wide range of negative experiences for youth identifying as LGBQ, was astounding for many and highlighted a dire climate of violence and discrimination across public and private spaces for LGBQ young people. In response to the survey results, we conducted datadriven focus groups where key populations, like groups of LGBQ young people, contributed their expertise to help us analyze the PFJ data (see Brewster, Billies, & Hyacinthe, 2010).

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the unjust distribution of opportunities reflected in the data, and to make it clear that though the problems might be experienced at the individual level, their root causes are located at the structural level. And, we used performance to invoke a collective social responsibility for active responses. Our turn to performance flowed directly from our epistemological stance as participatory action researchers. This epistemology springs from a venerable ancestry within social psychology of social scientists committed to producing research with and for marginalized populations, as discussed earlier. As a PAR project, PFJ began with the experiences and expertise of the youth researchers, and we understood those experiences as a multi-generational research collective through developing contextual, structural analyses of everyday issues. We took the turn to drama and performance allied with social scientist ancestors, Kurt Lewin, Claire Sellitz, Ignacio Martin Baro, and Morton Deutsch who insist on reconciling the psychological with the sociological and who insist on doing research with social relevance and impact on public policy. And, in this case, we self-consciously followed in the footsteps of the little known performance work of W.E.B. Du Bois (Du Bois, 1913). Du Bois used pageantry, performance, and circus theater in order to explore alternative possibilities of African American history and reality. Committed to theatre with Black people, for Black people, he used the stage to insert productive stories of African Americans into the public discourse and imagination (Krasner, 2001). Following in this tradition, the PFJ project turned to dramatic performances of our research project as a way to disseminate our research and engage with audiences. Building on what we knew of Du Bois’ aims, we not only wanted to find effective ways to broadcast our findings, but, aware of the diversity of experiences, knowledges and perspectives held in our adult audiences of privilege, we sought to create a fertile environment for piercing complacency towards growing political solidarity and collective action. Subasic, Reynolds and Turner (2008) offer a model for developing political solidarity that positions majority groups and minority groups in relation to authority. According to their work, political solidarity develops between majority and minority groups as there is a shift from an “us” and “them” orientation, to a sense of “we” in contrast to authority. In PFJ performances, we wanted to create a sense of interdependence with audiences towards a collectively held understanding of the social responsibility of action. The PFJ audiences included teachers, parents, school administrators, young people, social scientists, community members, police, Department of Education officials, and policy makers. In order to activate the participation of audience members, the performances had three phases: the researchers started with a presentation of the PFJ data in embodied, visual, storied ways that employed metaphor, humor, maps, graphs, and numbers. In the second phase audience members were invited to respond and react to the data using a form of improvisation called Playback Theatre (Fox, 1994; Fox & Fine, forthcoming; Salas, 2007) to transform the audience members’ affective responses into theatre on the spot. Finally, in the third phase, the PFJ researchers invited audience members to contribute their own expertise and experience in generating knowledge and visions for action in light of the PFJ data.

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After an introductory sketch challenging traditional notions of expertise, the PFJ performed data presentations began by setting the context for the findings. An excerpt from the script: Did you know that there are over 5,000 police in NYC schools? Did you know that in NYC we have to pass 5 standardized tests in order to graduate from high school? And now teacher tenure is tied to how well their students do on standardized tests. Did you know that in my first year of high school we had 100 people, and now there are only 30 graduating... we have a 45% graduation rate in NYC? Did you know, it’s really no joke, 45.8 million U.S. citizens don’t have health insurance? And, 1 in 6 New Yorkers are uninsured? But despite all of these things happening to us our survey found that: 69% of youth in our survey plan on getting a masters degree, doctoral degree or being a doctor or lawyer 90% of the youth of our survey feel somewhat or very hopeful about the future. 94 % of students care about getting good grades in school, and 89% feel their teachers have high expectations of them and say that teachers help when they don’t understand something. Each piece of data was accompanied by embodied frozen images, vivid projected images, and/or personal testimony. The youth researcher-performers then used the structure of a day-in-the-life to delve deeper into the findings. As one youth researcher explains in the performance: We’re showing you different days in the life of these different groups and what happens to people along the way. That was a day in the life of a teen with no negative experiences. Now we’re going to show an example of a day in the life of someone who has a negative experience in each of the 4 policy sectors of our study.

Once the data on youth experiences of circuits of dispossession and advantage in New York City has been presented in embodied ways, the youth researcherperformers pierced the fourth wall of the performance space and turned to the audience for the second phase of the performance. To illustrate: One performance took place on a winter Saturday at a New York City public high school at a conference for 300 teachers and educators interested in social justice education. PFJ was asked to present the data at the close of a one-day conference. At the end of the first phase of the performance, we invited audience members to tell us their feelings in reaction to hearing the PFJ data on youth experiences of dispossession. With each response (“I feel inspired by youth doing research”; “I’m outraged!”; “I hear these experiences everyday from my students, and I don’t know if anything can change.”) the youth researcher-performers created human sculptures that reflected layers of meaning within each response. Then, in the third phase, the youth researchers invited the educators to rise up out of their seats, come to the stage to create with us a collective, embodied vision of public education. The educators in the audience were at first reluctant to leave their

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seats, but as a vibrant image of what education could be took shape before their eyes, more and more audience members joined the youth researchers on the stage. By the end of the research presentation, there were more people in the “performance” than there were in the audience. Even though the work was momentary, fleeting, and metaphoric, it made obvious our commitment to engage collective responsibility for action in solidarity with each other. At the performance for educators, the PFJ data sparked discussion and debate amongst the crowd. Audience members were moved and they were also challenged. Many expressed that they didn’t know, and wanted to know, what actions to take to change current realities. “WHAT NOW?” they asked, or, “The data was unsurprising and frustrating. It makes me feel like what I do just isn’t enough.” Or, “Great job of data collection; great idea to frame surveys around issues of race, gender, and sexual orientations. How do we use data moving forward?” From these data, and from our methodology engaging audiences in our research, we theorize that all of us, youth and adults, need not only spaces for building relationships and thinking critically together across difference (Torre, 2005), but once we acknowledge mutual implication, we need to know how to develop circuits of political solidarity between privileged and marginalized groups. We need more opportunity to develop the intellectual and political muscles necessary to generate responses when societal structures are not working fairly and/or effectively. The PFJ performances were short-lived experiences; passing encounters for rooms of adults and youth. Our work was not designed to measure impact on audience, nor to track whether our methodology provoked audience members to take concrete action. At the same time, we do take seriously the performances as experiences which can be analyzed for meaning. From such analyses – currently in progress – we hope to be able to suggest new directions for future research and/or research-informed interventions.

Awakening a Sense of Injustice in the 21st Century Thirty five years after the original essay was penned, we find ourselves living in newly destabilized/destabilizing grounds of global and local injustices. The inequality gaps that littered U.S. culture in the 1970s have widened substantially in wealth, housing, human (in)security, education, incarceration, and health disparities. The footprints on young lives are scarring if lived in poverty and may be clueless if lived in privilege. As epidemiologists Wilkerson and Pickett (2009) document, in the midst of dramatic inequality gaps, those on the “top” have little knowledge, affect, or responsibility associated with disadvantage. In the aggregate, they disattend to the needs and capacities of those who have been marginalized; violence rises, as do healthcare problems, crime spreads, educational disparities widen, civic participation drops – democracy frays. In their international comparisons, the U.S. has among the highest inequality, with New York State and New York City rivaling for top spots within our nation. We worry what happens when elites are ignorant to the pain of injustice paid by their less privileged sisters and brothers. Thus we feel it is important to

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make visible some distinct assumptions about the project of awakening a sense of injustice today. First, a note on unit of analysis. These have been 35 long years. We can no longer speak of victims and victimizers; the world and our understandings of it have grown far more complex. Globally we all live in systems, structures, ideologies, and dynamics of injustice. None of us is exempt and we can all contest these capillaries, through actions large and small. We are all encased and damaged by unjust systems, even as some benefit materially and others suffer severe oppression. Fine and Ruglis (2008) have written on circuits of dispossession, documenting the ways in which privilege and disadvantage accumulate and are linked across sectors of public life. They/we rely on David Harvey’s (2004) writings on neo-liberalism and the growing global gap between wealthy and poor, North and South; what he calls “uneven geographical development.” Harvey distinguishes between the “dynamics of capital accumulation” that is the hording of capital by elites and multi-national corporations and accumulation by dispossession whereby common goods are taken from people, and privatized, as in the case of privatizing water, lands, mobility, check points, access to education, housing, parks, recreation, or prisons. “Accumulation by dispossession is about dispossessing somebody of their assets or their rights. . . we’re talking about the taking away of universal rights and the privatization of them so it [becomes] your particular responsibility, rather than the responsibility of the state” (Harvey, 2004, 2). In systems of dispossession, the simple binary of victims and victimizers is challenged as power circulates through ideologies, systems, relationships, and bodies. Indeed, some benefit, many suffer, and most “think” they are bystanders. But no one is outside. Our work on injustice must be theoretically situated in an understanding of circuits, inequality gaps, racial/gendered/classed and stratified formations. It is important for researchers to resist research that fetishizes or essentializes sub-groups, extracted from these larger formations. Second, re-cognizing shared fates. We live in an ironic moment. Ideologically people in the U.S. have been led to believe that as individuals they can survive independently, without relying on each other or the government. They can turn their backs on poor, immigrant, young, old, and still flourish. And yet structurally, economically, and politically, recent economic and environmental crises have thrown us into a tailspin of evidence confirming our profound interdependence. We think the latter is good news for political organizing. Soaking in a powerful ideological and structural strain of conservatism that resists and trivializes a progressive sense of a collective we, a common good, linked fates, it is difficult to visualize and re-cognize circuits of dispossession and potential pools of collective activism. And yet our participatory action research projects are designed to incite just that: We pursue research in order to awaken, in our coresearchers and in our audiences, a sense of shared outrage and urgency. We take as fundamental that the project of social inquiry is to render visible our human interdependence. Third, interrupting passivity. To awaken a sense of injustice in any/all is to pierce the thick cloud of passivity and interrupt the illusion that we are individual witnesses who may (or may not) decide to redress injustice. It is this sense of passivity,

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inevitability, futility, empathy and/or being outside that we seek to interrupt. Thus for example, when we work in prisons it is true, of course, that some of us are imprisoned and others are free to leave. But none of us lives outside the prison industrial complex and as a consequence all of us bear a responsibility to engage (critically, we would hope) with that system. Thus, we craft participatory research on systems of injustice to reveal the shared fates and penetrate the anesthesia; explode the lamination of victim, victimizer, bystander, and insist on action. Our projects are designed to reveal the contours, consequences, experiences, and uneven weight of injustice on lives, families, communities, the nation, and the globe. And our products – written, scholarly, popular, and performance – are choreographed to interrupt the passivity of those who believe they are simply “watching” the accumulation of privilege for some and the dispossession of most. Fourth, democratizing public science. We are excited by the possibilities of PAR as a democratic project of public science that can awaken injustice within the collective and nurture a sense of responsibility for social change beyond. The projects reviewed here raise the question of awakening a sense of injustice with/for/by/on behalf of whom? These are not merely arguments over prepositions – PAR raises significant challenges to psychological tradition in terms of expert validity and accountability. Surely awakening is a developmental process and methods matter. Perhaps researchers need to be re-awakened or re-reminded where the location of injustice is, sometimes the audiences need awakening, sometimes the participants need awakening – for example, in the case of privilege awakening needs to be taught; assumptions need to be deeply examined. Sometimes awakening needs reminding, other times it needs stimulating, other times it needs safe spaces and encouragement, other times emotions need to be awakened, etc. We find great hope in crafting contact zones where different forms of critical awareness can wake up together. Our research is encouraging, in very dark times. Youth who have been long marginalized and those of privilege carry in their bodies a sense that something is desperately wrong; an affect of discomfort and a generosity to mobilize. They share the courage to speak and the commitment for action. Critical research can be a tool in these campaigns for rousing a nation out of the slumber of complacency. Morton Deutsch’s Comments Chapter by Brett Stoudt, Maddy Fox, and Michelle Fine This chapter is fascinating. It presents a fundamental challenge to the way research is typically conducted in the social sciences. As I understand their critique, it is that the usual academic researcher implicitly assumes that he or she “owns” the right to research, thereby excluding the people who are subjects of research as potential, active researchers in the questions being studied. They consider this to be a false objectivity, an objectivity from the top, the God’s eye view of objectivity which excludes the view from below. I think they believe that a true objectivity in the study of any social issue is only

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achievable by the integration of multiple perspectives which emerge from the participation of the subjects being studied, as well as researchers from multiple disciplines, in all phases of the research: the formulation of the research questions, the development of the methods of the research, the conduct of the research, and the formulation and dissemination of the research findings. This is what they term Participatory Action Research (PAR). It is something that Lewin formulated and advocated as a way of improving social psychological theory and the effectiveness of social action groups. As they indicate, PAR is grounded in a long tradition of social psychological research. The research collective, formed by Michelle Fine and her colleagues, have conducted PARs in elite private schools, maximum security prisons, and community based organizations to document and contest “the radically uneven distribution of human rights, material resources, and social opportunities, the right to engage in research, and the experience of being treated with dignity.” I believe that this research collectively goes much beyond documentation. The gross inequalities that exist in the United States have been well documented in the recent book by Wilkinson and Pickett (2009) and the recent UNICEF study, “The Children Left Behind” (see a summary in the OP-ED section of the New York Times on 12/11/10). The book (which Michelle recently gave to me as a present) documents that among the richest nations in the world, the United States has the highest income inequality and one of the lowest social mobility. It also shows that various measures of well-being (longevity, health, education, etc.) decrease as income inequality increases among the nation and also among the states within the United States. Similarly, in the UNICEF study of the well-being of children in 24 of the richest countries in the world, the United States is one of the lowest nations in such measures as: educational resources and living space available for children; children’s math and science literacy, health problems, healthy eating, and rigorous physical activity. We need no further documentation of the gross inequalities and injustices that exist in the United States at the national level, much more is needed at the local level where people live, work, educate, need health care, and seek to have good family lives. What is also needed is to learn more about how to awaken the sense of injustice in both the advantaged and disadvantaged members of our society but, also, how once “awakened” they will become active in efforts to eliminate the injustices at the local and national levels. The PAR methods and studies described in this chapter contribute to this effort. The two interesting PAR studies presented in their chapter provide excellent illustrations of the ideology and methodology of PAR studies which, from their implementation, to their dissemination of the findings, are oriented to producing social change that is directed toward reducing or eliminating injustice. The authors assert that “PAR raises significant challenges to

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psychological tradition in terms of expert validity and accountability.” I interpret this statement to mean that the traditional research methods to develop theory and knowledge are too decontextualized from the actual processes of producing social change to develop valid theory and knowledge and traditional methods are unaccountable because they are not directly committed to and involved in producing social change. I think this chapter has well demonstrated the value of PAR for the social sciences and for social change. However, I do not consider it to be the only approach for developing valid theory and useful knowledge for social action and change. I have believed in Lewin’s dictum, “There is nothing so practical as good theory.” In developing theory, I have employed traditional methods, such as laboratory experiments. As I describe in the Concluding Chapter of this volume, the theories that I have developed have had considerable and discernable social effects. I believe this is also true for the work of many other social scientists. This is not to deny that PAR can provide interesting data and new insights that could be of much value to a social scientist seeking to develop valid theory that is socially useful. However, it is also true that PAR researchers might benefit from more use of some of the rigorous methods of assessing change developed by traditional researchers.

References Boler, M. (1999). Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine domination. New York: Stanford University Press. Brewster, K., Billies, M., & Hyacinthe, Z. (2010). Presentation: LGBTQ youth experiences with police in neighborhoods, subways, and to and from school. New York: Syracuse University Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI) Roundtable on LGBTQ Issues in Education. Callan, E. (2004). Creating citizens: Political education and liberal democracy. New York: Oxford University Press. Cammarota, J., & Fine, M. (2008). Revolutionizing education: Youth participatory action research in motion. New York: Routledge. Cudd, A. E. (2006). Analyzing oppression. New York: Oxford University Press. Deutsch, M. (1974). Awakening a sense of injustice. In M. Lerner & M. Ross (Eds.), The quest for justice: Myth, reality, ideal (pp. 1–43). Canada: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Deutsch, M. (1975). Equity, equality, and need: What determines which value will be used as the basis of distributive justice? The Journal of Social Issues, 31(3), 137–150. Deutsch, M., & Steil, J. M. (1988). Awakening the sense of injustice. Social Justice Research, 2(1), 3–23. Du Bois, W. E. B. (1913). The Crisis Magazine, 6, November, pp. 339–345. Fine, M., & Ruglis, J. (2009). Circuits and consequences of dispossession: The racialized realignment of the public sphere for U.S. youth. Transforming Anthropology, 17(1), 20–33. Fine, M., Stoudt, B., Fox, M., & Santos, M. (2010). The uneven distribution of social suffering: Documenting the social health consequences of neo-liberal social policy on marginalized youth. The European Health Psychologist, (12), 30–35.

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Fox, J. (1994). Acts of service: Spontaneity, commitment, tradition in the nonscripted theatre. New Paltz, NY: Tusitala Publishing. Fox, M., & Anderson, S. (2010). Working the openings: Youth participatory action research and documentary film making for justice. In R. Verma (Ed.), Be the change: Teacher, activist, global citizen (pp. 153–168). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Fox, M., & Fine, M. (forthcoming). Circulating critical research: Reflections on performance and moving inquiry into action. In G. Cannella & S. Steinberg (Eds.), Critical qualitative research reader. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599. Harvey, D. (2004). A geographer’s perspective on the new American imperialism. Conversations with history. Berkeley, CA: UC Institute of International Studies. Retrieved May 10, 2007, from Electronic document, http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people4/Harvey/harvey-con0.html Harvey, J. (1999). Civilized oppression. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Katz, C. (2008). Me and my monkey: What’s hiding in the security state. In R. Pain, S. J. Smith, & S. Smith (Eds.), Fear: Critical geopolitics and everyday life (pp. 59–72). Surrey: Ashgate Publishing. Krasner, D. (2001). “The pageant is the thing”: Black nationalism and the star of Ethiopia. In J. Mason & E. Gainor (Eds.), Performing America: Cultural nationalism in American theater (pp. 106–122). Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Krech, D. (1946). The challenge and the promise. The Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 2–6. Lewin, K. (1946). Action research and minority problems. The Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 34–46. Lippitt, R. (1946). Techniques for research in group living. The Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 55–61. Russell, F. H. (1946). Oil for the lamps of democracy. The Journal of Social Issues, 2(4), 7–14. Salas, J. (2007). Improvising real life: Personal story in playback theatre. New York: Tusitala. Stoudt, Brett G. (2007). The co-construction of knowledge in “safe spaces”: Reflecting on politics and power in participatory action research. Children, Youth and Environments, 17(2). Retrieved September 12, 2008, from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye Stoudt, B. G. (2009). The role of language in the investigation of privilege: Using participatory action research to discuss theory, develop methodology, & interrupt power. The Urban Review, 41, 7–28. Stoudt, B., Fox, M. & Fine, M. (forthcoming). Contesting privilege with critical participatory action research. Journal of Social Issues. Stoudt, B., Kuriloff, P., Reichert, M., & Ravitch, S. (2010). Educating for hegemony, researching for change: Collaborating with teachers and students to examine bullying at an elite private school. In A. Howard & R. Gaztambide-Fernandez (Eds.), Class privilege & education advantage (pp. 31–53). New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Subasic, E., Reynolds, K., & Turner, J. (2008). The political solidarity model of social change: Dynamics of self-categorization in intergroup power relations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 12(4), 330–352. Torre, M. (2005). The alchemy of integrated spaces: Youth participation in research collectives of difference. In Weis L & Fine M (Eds.), Beyond silenced voices (pp. 251–266). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Torre, M. E., & Ayala, J. (2009). Envisioning participatory action research entremundos. Feminism and Psychology, 19(3), 387–393. Torre, M., Fine, M., Stoudt, B., & Fox, M. (forthcoming). Critical participatory action research as public science. In P. Camic & H. Cooper (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in psychology. American Psychology Association. Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2009). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger. New York: Bloomsbury Press. Young, M. I. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 9

A Framework for Thinking about Oppression and Its Change Morton Deutsch

In this chapter, my purpose is to provide a framework for thinking about oppression and how to overcome it. Oppression is, I believe, at the root of many of the most serious, enduring conflicts in the world today. The chapter is divided into the following sections: I. The value premise underlying my use of the term “oppression”; II. A discussion of the nature of oppression; III. What forms does oppression take?; IV. What keeps oppression in place?; V. Awakening the sense of injustice; and, VI: A discussion of the strategies and tactics for overcoming oppression. Overcoming oppression will usually involve conflict with groups in power. Such conflicts have often taken a violent form. In the final section of my chapter, I will discuss some nonviolent strategies and tactics for overcoming oppression. My discussion will not focus on the different contexts in which oppression occurs, such as: the family, work, education, and between ethnic, religious, and racial groups. Some of this is presented in other papers in this issue. There is also an excellent discussion of the different contexts of oppression in the book, Social Inequality (Neckerman, 2004), which presents extensive empirical data about inequality in various contexts.

The Value Premise Underlying My Use of the Term “Oppression” The use of such terms as “oppression” and “injustice” implies the existence of a violation of a value or set of values. In employing such terms, I am adhering to the values incorporated in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. I believe there are several central Deutsch, M. (2006). A framework for thinking about oppression and its change. Social Justice Research, 19(1), 7–41. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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values underlying the Universal Declaration: democracy, egalitarianism, and effective cooperation. Democratic egalitarianism pervades the 30 articles of the Declaration. Effective cooperation among and within nations (i.e., among the individuals, groups, and institutions which comprise national and international groupings) is necessary to create the social, material, and environmental conditions that are conducive to democratic egalitarianism. Egalitarianism is expressed in the first sentence of the Preamble to the Declaration. “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family in the foundation of freedom, justice, and peace in the world . . .” In my book, Distributive Justice (Deutsch, 1985, pp. 41–42) I have written about equality and egalitarianism as follows: The concept of equality has been discussed extensively by moral and political philosophers (Berlin, 1955–56; Tawney, 1964; McCloskey, 1966; Wilson, 1966; Benn, 1967; Pennock and Chapman, 1967; Oppenheim, 1968; Rawls, 1971; Dworkin, 1981a, 1981b; and Walzer, 1983). In the vast literature dealing with equality, it is defined in various ways. I shall not attempt to summarize or critically examine this literature. My sense of it is that advocates of equality and egalitarianism are primarily opposed to invidious distinctions among people but do not assume that all distinctions are invidious. Invidious distinctions are ones that promote (1) generalized or irrelevant feelings of superiority-inferiority (if I am a better tennis player or more good-looking than you, I am superior to you as a person); (2) generalized or irrelevant status differences (if I am a manager and you are a worker in a factory, I should have a higher standard of living than you); (3) generalized or irrelevant superordinatesubordinate relations (if I am a captain and you are a private, I can order you to shine my shoes); or (4) the view that the legitimate needs and interests of some people are not as important or do not warrant as much consideration as those of other people (this may be because of my sex, race, age, national or family origin, religion, political affiliation, occupation, or physical handicap, or because of special talents or lack of talent). From an egalitarian perspective, one is not making an invidious distinction and thus creating inequality when one recognizes, approves, applauds, honors, or shows appreciation of an unusually good performance, of a courageous action, or of a well accomplished difficult task. Equality does not imply identical treatment of everyone without regard to particular circumstance. Honoring another’s performance does not diminish those who are not honored unless they consider themselves to be in a competitive or zero-sum relationship; if they view themselves as part of a cooperative community, they are enhanced by another’s honor. The insistence on treating people identically, without regard to circumstance, is a pseudoegalitarianism, which often masks basic doubts or ambivalence about one’s commitment to egalitarian values.

Egalitarianism is conducive to effective cooperation in that it promotes social harmony, which in turn promotes mutual aid and the efficient specialization of function in cooperative work. (See Deutsch (1990) for a discussion of the psychological consequences of different forms of social organization.) Although cooperative democratic egalitarianism or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not imply that all individuals, groups, or categories of people are treated identically or have the same positions in society, it does imply that the material and social conditions that affect individual well-being are distributed so that there are not gross systematic disparities in the well-being, opportunities for human development, and the rights of people, individually or collectively. Of course, due to inadequate knowledge, there is considerable uncertainty and conflict about how to create a world which would actualize the values of the Universal Declaration.

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In this chapter, my discussion of forms of oppression assumes that systematic, large inequalities of the kinds described above are unjust. Some would challenge this assumption and assert, not only that such inequalities are inevitable, inherent in human nature and in the social orders in animals as well as humans, and that they also promote economic productivity. However, I have pointed out (Deutsch, 1985, pp. 40–41) if a cooperative system is oriented toward increasing its economic productivity, its rational tendency will be to allocate its economic functions and goods to use them effectively, but to allocate its rewards (consumer goods) according to need or equality (if more than a bare necessity is available). However, it is also suggested that inherent pathologies in the extension of economic values throughout a society or in the temptation to accumulate personal power may give rise to an equity principle that allocates economic rewards and political power as well as economic functions and goods to those who appear to contribute the most to the group. This equity principle, over the long run, is likely to be dysfunctional for groups, economically as well as socially. Economically, by allocating rewards and power disproportionately, it enables those who are in power to bias the system of allocation to perpetuate their disproportionate rewards and power even when they are no longer making relatively large contributions to the group’s well-being. Socially, it tends to foster the introduction of economic values in all aspects of social life with a resultant loss to the quality of life. As Diesing has written: “A person becomes alienated from his possessions and creations when he learns to regard them as utilities which have value because other people desire them; he becomes alienated from other people when they are perceived as competing with him for scarce goods; and he becomes alienated from himself when he sees his own values as a utility based on the desires of others” (1962, p. 93).

The fact that cooperative egalitarianism is found in many hunting-fishinggathering societies, as well as more complex societies, indicates that oppressive inequalities are not a human inevitability (see Mead, 1937; Gil, 1998; Kemp & Fry, 2004). And Henry Levin’s paper (in this issue) indicates that large cooperative, egalitarian enterprises are both more productive and more humane than their traditional counterparts which reject cooperative ownership and management. I found similar results in my review of egalitarian systems in the laboratory as well as in the social world in my book, Distributive Justice (Deutsch, 1985). I also note that anthropological reviews of peaceful societies indicate such societies are mainly cooperative and egalitarian. (See Howell & Willis, 1989; Kemp & Fry, 2004, Encyclopedia of Selected Peaceful Societies, 2005, at 222.peacefulsocieties.org.)

What Is Oppression? Oppression is the experience of repeated, widespread, systemic injustice. It need not be extreme and involve the legal system (as in slavery, apartheid, or the lack of right to vote) nor violent (as in tyrannical societies). Harvey (1999) has used the term “civilized oppression” to characterize the everyday processes of oppression in normal life. Civilized oppression “is embedded in unquestioned norms, habits, and symbols, in the assumptions underlying institutions and rules, and the collective consequences of following those rules. It refers to the vast and deep injustices some

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groups suffer as a consequence of often unconscious assumptions and reactions of well-meaning people in ordinary interactions which are supported by the media and cultural stereotypes as well as by the structural features of bureaucratic hierarchies and market mechanisms” (Young, 1990, p. 41). We cannot eliminate this structural oppression by getting rid of the rulers or by making some new laws, because oppressions are systematically reproduced in the major economic, political and cultural institutions. While specific privileged groups are the beneficiaries of the oppression of other groups, and thus have an interest in the continuation of the status quo, they do not typically understand themselves to be agents of oppression.

What Forms Does Oppression Take? I consider here five types of injustices that are involved in oppression: distributive injustice, procedural injustice, retributive injustice, moral exclusion, and cultural imperialism. To identify which groups of people are oppressed and what forms their oppression takes, each of these five types of injustice should be examined. For a comprehensive discussion of social psychological research related to the topics discussed below, see Tyler, Boeckman, Smith, and Huo (1997).

Distributive Injustice Under this heading, I shall briefly consider the distribution of four types of capital (Perrucci & Wysong, 1999)—consumption, investment, skill, and social. Consumption capital is usually thought of as “standard of living.” It includes income as well as job and financial security and the amounts and types of food and water, housing, clothing, physical security, health care, education, sanitations, physical mobility (such as travel), recreation, and services that are available to members of a group. Clearly, there are gross differences in income and standard of living among the different nations, among the different ethnic groups within nations, among the different classes, and between the sexes. For example, compare Sudan with Canada, African Americans with Euro-Americans, employees of General Motors and its executives, males and females. Sen, for example (in Sen & Drèze, 1999, Chapter 7, p. 140, in the book titled “India, Economic Development, and Social Opportunity”) writes: “women tend in general to fare quite badly in relative terms compared to men, even within the same families. This is reflected not only in such matters as education and opportunity to develop talents, but also in the more elementary fields of nutrition, health, and survival.” He estimated that there are “more than a hundred million missing women,” in Asia and North Africa, as a result of the unequal deprivations they suffer, compared to men. In other words, the survival rates of women compared to men are

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considerably lower than could be expected when these are compared to the relative survival rates of men and women in Europe, North America, and sub-Saharan Africa where the differences in consumption capital available to males and females are not as unequal. Investment capital “is what people use to create more capital” (Perrucci & Wysong, 1999, p. 10). Income is related to consumption capital and, also, wealth, which in turn, is related to investment capital. Generally, wealth is distributed more unequally than income. The inequalities among nations, within nations, among ethnic groups, among the social classes, between the physically impaired and unimpaired, and between the sexes are apt to be considerably greater with regard to investment than consumption capital. In 1998, in the U. S., the top 10% of the population possessed 68.7% of the financial assets while the bottom 90% had only 31.3% (Scholz & Levine, 2004), and this discrepancy has undoubtedly increased since then. Skill capital is the specialized knowledge, social and work skills, as well as the various forms of intelligence and credentials that are developed as a result of education and training and experiences in one’s family, community, and work settings. As Perrucci and Wysong (1999, p. 14) point out: “The most important source of skill capital in today’s society is located in the elite universities that provide the credentials for the privileged class. For example, the path into corporate law with six-figure salaries and million-dollar partnerships is provided by about two-dozen elite law schools where children of the privileged class enroll. Similar patterns exist for medical school graduates, research scientists, and those holding professional degrees in management and business . . . . People in high-income and wealth-producing professions will seek to protect the market value not only for themselves, but also for their children, who will enter similar fields.” It is evident that those in non-privileged groups in many societies will have much less opportunity to enter elite universities and to acquire the skills and credentials which would have high market value. Social capital is the network of social ties (family, friends, neighbors, social clubs, classmates, acquaintances, etc.), which can provide information and access to jobs and to the means of acquiring the other forms of capital, as well as emotional and financial support. It is the linkage that one has or does not have to organizational power, prestige, and opportunities. The social capital that one can acquire and maintain is affected by such factors as one’s family’s social class, membership in particular ethnic and religious groups, age, sex, physical disability, and sexual orientation. In most societies, the ability to acquire and maintain social capital by those who are underclass or working class, disabled, elderly, members of minority, ethnic, religious or racial groups, or women is considerably more limited than the dominant groups. Personality, undoubtedly, also plays a role: one could expect that individuals who are ambitious, sociable, intelligent, and personally attractive will acquire more social capital than those who are not. To sum up this section on distributive justice (Deutsch & Coleman, 2000, p. 56): “Every type of system—from a society to a family—distributes benefits, costs, and harms (its reward systems are a reflection of this). One can examine the

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different forms of capital (consumption, investment, skill, social) and such benefits as income, education, health care, police protection, housing, and water supplies, and such harms as accidents, rapes, physical attacks, imprisonment, death, and rat bites, and see how they are distributed among categories of people: rich versus poor, males versus females, employers versus employees, whites versus blacks, heterosexuals versus homosexuals, police officers versus teachers, adults versus children. Such examination reveals gross disparities in distribution of one or another benefit or harm received by the categories of people involved. Thus, blacks generally received fewer benefits and more harm than whites in the United States. In most parts of the world, female children are less likely than male children to receive as much education or inherit parental property, and they are more likely to suffer from sexual abuse.”

Procedural Injustice In addition to assessing the fairness of the distribution of outcomes, individuals judge the fairness of the procedures that determine the outcomes. (See Lind & Tyler, 1988, for a comprehensive discussion of procedural justice.) Research evidence indicates that fair treatment and procedure are a more pervasive concern to most people than fair outcomes. Fair procedures are psychologically important, because they encourage the assumption that they give rise to fair outcomes in the present and will also in the future. In some situations, where it is not clear what “fair outcomes” should be, fair procedures are the best guarantee that the decision about outcomes is made fairly. Research indicates that one is less apt to feel committed to authorities, organizations, social policies, and governmental rules and regulations if the procedures associated within them are considered unfair. Also, people feel affirmed if the procedures to which they are subjected treat them with the respect and dignity they feel is their due; if so treated, it is easier for them to accept a disappointing outcome. Questions with regard to the justice of procedures can arise in various ways. Let us consider, for example, evaluation of teacher performance in a school. Some questions immediately come to mind: Who has “voice” or representation in determining whether such evaluation is necessary? How are the evaluations to be conducted? Who conducts them? What is to be evaluated? What kind of information is collected? How are its accuracy and validity ascertained? How are its consistency and reliability determined? What methods of preventing incompetence or bias in collecting and processing information are employed? Who constitutes the groups that organize the evaluations, draw conclusions, make recommendations, and make decisions? What roles do teachers, administrators, parents, students, and outside experts have in the procedures? How are the ethicality, considerateness, and dignity of the process protected? Implicit in these questions are some values with regard to procedural justice. One wants procedures that generate relevant, unbiased, accurate, consistent, reliable,

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competent, and valid information and decisions as well as polite, dignified, and respectful behavior in carrying out the procedures. Also, voice and representation in the processes and decisions related to the evaluation are considered desirable by those directly affected by the decision. In effect, fair procedures yield good information for use in the decision-making processes as well as voice in the processes for those affected by them, and considerate treatment as the procedures are being implemented (Deutsch & Coleman, 2000, pp. 44–45). One can probe a system to determine whether it offers fair procedures to all. Are all categories of people treated with politeness, dignity, and respect by judges, police, teachers, administrators, employers, bankers, politicians, and others in authority? Are some but not others allowed to have a voice and representation, as well as adequate information, in the processes and decisions that affect them? It is evident that those people and groups with more capital are more likely to have access to political leaders and to be treated with more respect by the police, judges, and other authority than those with less capital. Also, their ability to have “voice” in matters that affect them is considerably greater.

Retributive Injustice Retributive injustice is concerned with the behavior and attitudes of people, especially those in authority, in response to moral rule breaking. One may ask: Are “crimes” by different categories of people less likely to be viewed as crimes, to result in an arrest, to be brought to trial, to result in conviction, to lead to punishment or imprisonment or the death penalty, and so on? Considerable disparity is apparent between how “robber barons” and ordinary robbers are treated by the criminal-justice system, between manufacturers who knowingly sell injurious products (obvious instances being tobacco and defective automobiles) and those who negligently cause an accident. Similarly, almost every comparison of the treatment of black and white criminal offenders indicates that, if there is a difference, blacks receive worse treatment.

Moral Exclusion Moral exclusion refers to: Who is and is not entitled to fair outcomes and fair treatment by inclusion or lack of inclusion in one’s moral community? Albert Schweitzer included all living creatures in his moral community, and some Buddhists include all of nature. Most of us define a more limited moral community. Individuals and groups who are outside the boundary in which considerations of fairness apply may be treated in ways that would be considered immoral if people within the boundary were so treated. Consider the situation in Bosnia. Prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia, the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats in Bosnia were more or less part of one moral community and treated one another with some degree of civility.

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After the start of civil strife (initiated by power-hungry political leaders), vilification of other ethnic groups became a political tool, and it led to excluding others from one’s moral community. As a consequence, the various ethnic groups committed the most barbaric atrocities against one another. The same thing happened with the Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and Burundi. At various periods in history and in different societies, groups and individuals have been treated inhumanely by other humans: slaves by their masters, natives by colonialists, blacks by whites, Jews by Nazis, women by men, children by adults, the physically disabled by those who are not, homosexuals by heterosexuals, political dissidents by political authorities, and one ethnic or religious group by another. When a system is under stress, are there differences in how categories of people are treated? Are some people more apt to lose their jobs, be excluded from obtaining scarce resources, or be scapegoated and victimized? During periods of economic depression, social upheaval, civil strife, and war, frustrations are often channeled to exclude some groups from the treatment normatively expected from others in the same moral community. Moral exclusion “is perhaps the most dangerous form of oppression” (Young, 1990, p. 53). It has led to genocide against the Jews and gypsies by the Nazis, the Turkish genocide of the Armenians, the autogenocide by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the mass killings of the political opposition by the Argentinian generals, to widespread terrorism against civilians by various terrorist groups, to the enslavement of many Africans, to mention only a few examples of the consequences of moral exclusion. Lesser forms of moral exclusions, marginalization, occur also against whole categories of people—women, the physically impaired, the elderly, and various ethnic, religious, and racial groups—in many societies where barriers prevent them from full participation in the political, economic, and social life of their societies. The results of these barriers are not only material deprivation but also disrespectful, demeaning, and arbitrary treatment as well as decreased opportunity to develop and employ their individual talents. For extensive research and writing in this area, see the work of Susan Opotow (1987, 1990, 1995, 1996a, 1996b, 2001), a leading scholar in this area.

Cultural Imperialism “Cultural Imperialism involves the universalization of a dominant group’s experience and culture and establishing it as the norm” (Young, 1990, p. 59). Those living under cultural imperialism find themselves defined by the dominant others. As Young (op. cit.) points out: “Consequently, the differences of women from men, American Indians or Africans from Europeans, Jews from Christians, become reconstructed as deviance and inferiority.” To the extent that women, Africans, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, etc. must interact with the dominant group whose

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culture mainly provides stereotyped images of them, they are often under pressure to conform to and internalize the dominant group’s images of their group. Culturally dominated groups often experience themselves as having a double identity, one defined by the dominant group and the other coming from membership in one’s own group. Thus, in my childhood, adult African-American men were often called “boy” by members of the dominant white groups but within their own group, they might be respected ministers and wage earners. Culturally subordinated groups are often able to maintain their own culture because they are segregated from the dominant group and have many interactions within their own group, which are invisible to the dominant group. In such contexts, the subordinated culture commonly reacts to the dominant culture with mockery and hostility fueled by their sense of injustice and of victimization.

What Keeps Oppression in Place? Here, I consider other factors which contribute to the maintenance of oppression: the superior power of the dominant group; the social production of meaning in the service of legitimating oppression; the self-fulfilling prophecies arising from oppression; and the distorted relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor.

The Superior Power of the Oppressor Elsewhere, I have discussed different forms of power (Deutsch, 1973), as have many others. Here, I am focusing on “competitive” power: the power to control, dominate, or exploit another person, groups, or nation whose power is not sufficient to prevent such domination or exploitation rather than on “cooperative” power: where it is to the benefit of each other if the other’s power is enhanced. Such resources as wealth, status, size, weapons, intelligence, knowledge, organizational skill, internal unity, respect, affection, allies, and a reputation of being powerful are some of the bases of power. Effective power depends not only on the control or possession of resources to generate power but also upon the motivation to employ these resources to influence others, skill in converting these resources to usable power, and good judgment in employing this power so that its use is appropriate in type and magnitude to the situation in which it is used. It is evident that a group’s possession of high effective power increases its chances of getting what it desires. Therefore, one would expect that the members of high-power groups would be more satisfied with their groups and more intent on preserving the status quo than members of low-power groups. Given this asymmetry in power and satisfactions, it also could be expected that pressure for change in the power relations is most apt to come from low-power groups. The question

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naturally arises: How do high-power groups use their power to prevent or contain such pressure from low-power groups? There are several basic ways: control over the instruments of systematic terror and of their use; control over the state which establishes and enforces the laws, rules, and procedures which regulate the social institutions of the society; control over the institutions (such as the family, school, church, and media) which socialize and indoctrinate people to accept the power inequalities; and interactive power in which there are repeated individual behaviors by those who are more powerful which confirm the subordinate status of those in low power. In addition, there are the self-fulfilling prophecies in which the behavior of the oppressed, resulting from their oppression, are used by the oppressor to justify the oppression; and the distorted relation between the oppressor and the oppressed.

Systematic Terror As Sidanius and Pratto (1999, p. 41) point out in their excellent book Social Dominance, systematic terror can be official, semi-official, or unofficial. “Official terror is the public and legally sanctioned violence and threat of violence by organs of the state toward members of a subordinate group” (as in the South African police toward blacks during the Apartheid period). Semi-official terror is the violence or intimidation carried out by officials of the state but not legally sanctioned by the state (e.g., the death squads in Argentina composed of paramilitary organizations) while unofficial terror is perpetrated by private individuals from dominant groups, often illegally, with the tacit approval of public officials (as in the lynchings of African-American men accused of having sex with white women). Systematic terror may not be necessary to keep a subordinated group in its place, if they think the social institutions controlled by the dominant group, as well as their daily interactions with its members, are tolerable. Or, it might be that their socialization and indoctrination by the social institutions controlled by the powerful have led them to accept and internalize the values and ideology of the dominant group. Even so, a harsh, dominant group in a totalitarian society may find it expedient, as well as self-affirming, to keep salient the potential of systematic terror, through its occasional, arbitrary use to encourage the continued internalization of its values by the subordinate group and the toleration of the injustices it is experiencing.

Control Over the State In a self-reinforcing cycle, the powerful in any society control the state and control of the state increases the power of those who control it. In the United States and other Western democracies, large corporations and wealth individuals are the primary funders of political campaigns, political parties, and political candidates; they also own and control most of the mass media. Additionally, they provide the support

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for most of the private policy-planning network—the think tanks, research institutes, policy discussion groups, and foundations—which help to set the national policy agenda and to establish policy priorities (see Perrucci & Wysong, 1999, Chapters 4 and 5 for a detailed discussion). The result of the foregoing is an immense bias in the political system favoring large corporations and the economically privileged in the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. The effects of this bias are evidenced in which groups experience the various forms of injustice described earlier in this chapter. In the United States, it is apparent that such minorities as African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, the physically impaired, single mothers, and children have relatively little power and are more likely to be poor and to suffer the other injustices associated with poverty. At the global level, a similar process occurs: the large multi-national corporations, the more powerful nations, and wealthy investors are able to influence the processes and practices affecting international trade, aid, and investment to their own advantage and, often, to the detriment of the people in third-world states.

Control Over Socialization and Indoctrination The development of discontent among the disadvantaged and outrage among the oppressed are often aborted by the socialization and indoctrination institutions of society. The family, school, religious institutions, and the media socialize and indoctrinate the oppressed to obey authority and to keep them aware that punishment for disobedience will be severe, to view the disadvantages they suffer as legitimate, or to have faith that they will be compensated for them in the after-life. The rewards and punishments in the here-and-now, as well as the after-life, for acceptance or challenging authority and the status quo are presented vividly and repeatedly in both the myths and practices of the society and its indoctrinating institutions.

Interactive Power This form of power has been defined by Harvey (1999, p. 43) as “the power to take the initiative in a relationship: in beginning or ending a relationship, and in insisting on its being modified, and in taking a number of communication initiatives like the power to begin or end a specific contact (like a conversation), to insist on being listened to and on being given answers to reasonable and pertinent questions.” The socially privileged, typically, assume that they have the right to control the interactions in their relationship with members of subordinated groups. Challenging this assumption can be risky for a subordinate and, as a consequence, they usually go unchallenged. The repeated, everyday experience of being treated as an inferior produces a public image of being an inferior, which may be internalized as an image of self-inferiority. In the socially privileged, in contrast, such interactions will produce a public image of superiority and a corresponding self-image. Such non-egalitarian

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everyday interactions between the socially dominant and the oppressed help to keep the system of oppression in place by the public images and self-images they produce and perpetuate.

The Social Production of Meaning in the Service of Legitimating Oppression Under this heading, we will provide some illustrations of how the various institutions of society and facets of its culture implicitly “proclaim the superiority of the oppressor’s identity” (Noel, 1994, p. 7). The oppressors use “history,” “the law of nature,” “the will of God,” “science,” “the criteria of art,” and “language” as well as the social institutions of society to legitimize their superiority and to ignore or minimize the identity of the oppressed. Some illustrations (see Noel, 1994, for a more detailed discussion) follow: . . . The Declaration of Independence starts with “We the People” but the “we” did not include Native Americans, slaves, women, or youths. . . . “History,” as it appears in the textbooks, is mainly a series of events that involve “great men” such as conquerors, kings, presidents, or successful revolutionary leaders. They were the “winners”; the losers, if mentioned, are usually presented in a derogatory manner. The history of women, African-Americans, Native Americans, children, the aged, homosexuals, the physically challenged, and other minority groups are too insignificant to be noted except as problems. . . . The pseudoscientific “Social Darwinism” eagerly misapplied such ideas as “survival of the fittest,” “hereditary determinism,” and “stages of evolution” to the relations between different human social groups—classes and nations as well as social races—to justify existing exploitative social relations and to rationalize imperialist policies. “The rich and powerful were biologically superior; they had achieved their positions as a result of natural selection. It would be against nature to interfere with the inequality and suffering of the poor and weak. Imperialism was patriotism in a race endowed with the genius for empire, for those superior peoples meant to lead inferior peoples” (Deutsch, 1973, pp. 102–103). . . . All the large-scale religions share the belief in female inferiority (Noel, 1994). God, according to the Christian tradition, made man in his own image, while a woman is a mere reflection of man. In Hinduism, women are not even eligible for salvation; they must await for another incarnation. In Islam, the testimony of a woman is worth only half that of a man. Everyday, the orthodox Jewish male thanks God “for not having made him a woman.” According to Pope John Paul II, women are not allowed to be priests because this would be contrary to both their humanity and femininity. . . . The behavioral and social sciences have often legitimized the oppressors’ claim to superiority. Well-known psychologists have used the results of intelligence testing to proclaim that African-Americans, Jews, Eastern Europeans, and people from the Mediterranean area are inferior to Anglo-Saxons. Piaget and

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Kohlberg indicated that women have a less developed moral judgment than men. Sociologists (e.g., Banfield) have considered the lower classes to be pathological; anthropologists have employed the term “primitive” to characterize indigenous societies; psychiatrists have considered homosexuality to be a mental disease, women to suffer from “penis envy,” and that children were fantasizing their abuses. . . . The historians of art, music, and literature have much neglected the contributions of women and have frequently credited their works to men; “art” and “literature” are created by the dominators. African art is “primitive” art, even though copied by Picasso; “gays” write “homosexual” novels; and female film directors produce “women” movies. It has long been accepted for minority artists and performers to work in their own group’s genre—for example, for blacks to create and perform jazz music. Only recently have blacks been permitted to express themselves in the higher “genres” of classical music, ballet, or opera.

The Contribution of Self-fulfilling Prophecies to the Maintenance of Oppression The myths of moral, intellectual, or motivational superiority of the oppressor, which often are used to legitimize the subordination of oppressed groups, are typically supported by self-fulfilling prophecies. As Sidanius and Pratto (1999, p. 227) point out: “Societies are set up in ways that make life relatively easy for dominants and relatively difficult for subordinates.” Subordinated groups are less likely to live in circumstances which encourage and stimulate the development of one’s intellectual potential; which foster the motivation to be ambitious and to achieve economic success; which motivate conformity to the social norms against deviant and criminal behavior; which foster intragroup cohesiveness; and which contribute to the development of physical and mental health. These deficiencies resulting from oppression support the mythology and stereotypes promulgated by the oppressor and, in a selffulfilling prophecy, enable the dominant to justify their oppression by characterizing the oppressed as being “dumb, lazy, or immoral.” Of course, there are oppressed groups who do not fit these stereotypes. Such groups, which have high intellectual and economic attainments as well as much intragroup cohesiveness, are often viewed as potential competitors. They are stereotyped as “cunning, deceitful, overly ambitious, and clannish.” These groups tend to be morally excluded or marginalized so that they have only restricted or limited participation in the important institutions of society—political, legal, educational, etc. They tend to be segregated from the dominant group and their economic activities are primarily in stigmatized occupations and often they have to be very ambitious, cunning, and clannish to survive and thrive. As I have suggested elsewhere (Deutsch & Collins, 1951), these groups are seen as potential competitive threats to the dominant group and the responses to such threats often take the forms of intolerance, exclusion, or extermination.

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The Distorted Relationship between the Oppressed and the Oppressor The Oppressed Imagine the situation of an oppressed or abused child, wife, employee, or citizen. Each is in some critical way dependent upon the oppressor—the parent, the husband, the employer (company or organization), and the governing undemocratic power. Suppose the oppressed has needs or desires of which the oppressor strongly disapproves (e.g., physical affection, self-esteem, autonomy, self-determination) or only allows their expression in distorted, dissatisfying, self-abusive forms. The reaction of the oppressed is apt to be one of frustration → anger → anxiety if the oppressor indicates, even subtly, that the oppressed will be severely punished if the oppressed expresses her desires, frustrations, or anger. One way of reducing the anxiety aroused by the temptations to manifest the forbidden desires is to build an internal barrier to their expression by internalizing the threat through identification with the oppressor (A. Freud, 1937). Doing so leads, at one level, to guilt and selfhatred for having these desires. At a deeper level, it leads to guilt and self-hatred for abandoning one’s self, as well as rage and a sense of moral superiority toward the oppressor who is responsible for this abandonment. As a result of these processes, submission and obedience to the oppressor, as well as depression, are commonly found among the oppressed when they are interacting with oppressors or when they are in oppressive situations. However, it should be recognized that many who experience oppression in some aspects of their life do not necessarily experience it in other aspects; so that they are not necessarily submissive and depressed personalities wracked by guilt, selfhatred, and rage in all situations. Damage to the personalities of oppressed people will be limited, even when exposed to pervasive oppression, if they are also part of a supportive, cohesive community whose values oppose oppression. The Oppressor If we were to examine the oppressors psychologically—the child abusers, the husbands who batter their wives, brutal bosses, and political tyrants—I believe that we would find that the oppressors need the oppressed. Their need to control and dominate the other, their intolerance of the autonomy of the other, makes them dependent upon having vulnerable, weaker others for the definition of their own power. Their own deep sense of vulnerability (anxieties about helplessness and impotence, guilt about forbidden desires and rage, self-hatred for vulnerability) leads to strong needs both to deny one’s vulnerability (by projection of one’s anxieties, guilt, and contempt onto others who are more vulnerable) and to have the power to control those who are vulnerable or can be made to be more vulnerable. The oppressor needs to be able to make demands which are arbitrary and unreasonable so that the obedience of the oppressed is due to the oppressor’s power and not to the agreement of the oppressed. The oppressor’s intolerance of the autonomy of the oppressed

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is (Lichtenberg, 1990, p. 26) “neither idle nor freely chosen; it is a function of dependence on the vulnerable others for the definition of his or her own power.”1 One can, of course, be more powerful in a relationship (such as a parent-child, employer-employee relationship) without being an oppressor. Power can be used “for” the other rather than “against” the other.

The Psychodynamic Relationship of the Oppressor and the Oppressed There are structural similarities between the sadomasochistic and the oppressoroppressed relationship. Each side of the relationship has some of the latent qualities of the other side: the sadist when he is whipping the masochist is also whipping himself; the oppressor when he is controlling the oppressed is controlling himself. The masochist, when whipped, is also having the sadist within himself punished. Similarly, the oppressed who is being controlled is also having his rage controlled. It seems obvious that not all oppressors have “oppressive” personalities nor do all the oppressed have “oppressed” personalities in the sense that they do not consistently prefer and seek out relationships where they can be the “oppressors” or the “oppressed.” Nevertheless, I suggest that in any longstanding oppressive relationship, both the psychodynamics within its participants as well as social expectations will contribute to its persistence and resistance to change. Thus, in Afghanistan (despite the ending of the rule of the Taliban and their exposure to different models of family relationships on TV), many wives will continue to believe that their husbands have the right to beat them if they disobey them. I conclude this section of my discussion by stating that any attempt to end longenduring oppressive relations will have to address the psychodynamic issues which lead people to resist changing unhappy but familiar relationships. Some of the anxieties and fears that have to be addressed for the oppressed and oppressor are listed below: 1. Both feel anxious in the face of the unknown. They believe that they will be foolish, humiliated, or helpless in a new unclear relationship; 2. Both fear the guilt and self-contempt for their roles in maintaining the oppressive relationship; 3. The oppressed fears that their rage will be unleashed; the oppressor is in terror of this rage;

1 Also, it should be noted that the social science literature on “quality-of-life” and “subjective wellbeing” indicates that there is a low contribution beyond the poverty level in advanced economies, of greater income to subjective well-being (Kahneman, Diener, & Schwarz, 1999; Lane, 2000). The oppressors’ drive for superior wealth, accompanied by conspicuous consumption, often impairs social relations, a key component of subjective well-being.

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4. Both fear punishment if they change: the oppressed from the oppressor, the oppressor from the oppressed and other oppressors; and, 5. Both anticipate loss from the change: the oppressed will lose their sense of moral superiority and the excuses of victimhood; the oppressor will lose the respect and material benefits associated with being more powerful.

Awakening the Sense of Injustice In this section, I shall consider the sensitivity to injustice in the victim and the victimizer. Awareness of injustice is a precondition for overcoming it. For a more extended discussion, see Deutsch and Steil (1988).

The Differential Sensitivity to Injustice of the Victim and the Victimizer Although it may be morally better “to be sinned against than to sin,” it is generally accepted that the immediate pain is usually greater for the one who is sinned against than for the sinner. As I have indicated earlier, the victimizers—in addition to their gains from their exploitative actions—commonly have the reassurance of the official definitions of justice and the support of such major institutions as the church, the press, and the schools to deaden their sensitivities to the injustices inherent in their relations with the victim. The victim may, of course, be taken in by the official definitions and the indoctrination emanating from social institutions and, as a result, lose his sensitivity to injustice. Because he is the one who is experiencing the negative consequences of the injustice, he is also less likely to feel committed to the official definitions and indoctrination because of his lack of participation in creating them. The explanation of the differential sensitivity in terms of differential gains and differential power is not the complete story. There are, of course, relations in which the victimizer is not of superior power, and yet, even so, he will not experience guilt for his actions. Consider a traffic accident in which a car hits a pedestrian. The driver of the car will often perceive the accident so as to place responsibility for it upon the victim. Seeing the victim as responsible will enable the driver to maintain a positive image of himself. Projecting the blame onto the victim enables the victimizer to feel blameless. If we accept the notion that most people try to maintain a positive conception of themselves, we can expect a differential sensitivity to injustice in those who experience pain, harm, or misfortune and those who cause it. If I try to think well of myself, I shall minimize my responsibility for any injustice that is connected with me or minimize the amount of injustice that has occurred if I cannot minimize my responsibility. On the other hand, if I am the victim of pain and harm, to think well of myself, it is necessary for me to believe that it was not my due: it is not a just dessert

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for a person of my good character. Thus, the need to maintain positive self-esteem leads to opposite reactions in those who have caused an injustice and those who suffer from it. Although the need to maintain a positive self-regard is common, it is not universal. The victim of injustice, if he views himself favorably, may be outraged by his experience and attempt to undo it; in the process of so doing, he may have to challenge the victimizer. If the victimizer is more powerful and has the support of the legal and other institutions of the society, the victim will realize that it would be dangerous to act on his outrage or even to express it. As I have indicated earlier, under such circumstances, in a process that Anna Freud (1937) labeled “identification with the aggressor,” the victim may control his dangerous feelings of injustice by denying them and by internalizing the derogatory attitudes of the victimizer toward himself.

Conditions That Awaken and Intensify the Sensitivity to Injustice In the preceding, I have suggested that the sense of injustice may be minimal in the oppressors and also in the oppressed under certain circumstances. Here, I wish to consider the conditions that awaken and intensify the sensitivity to injustice. The major explanatory theme advanced by social scientists for the sensitivity to injustice is that of relative deprivation: the perceived discrepancy between what a person believes she is entitled to and what she obtains regarding the different forms of justice described in Part III: distributive, procedural, retribution, moral inclusion, and cultural imperialism. It is commonly assumed that it is relative rather than absolute deprivation that is critical in stimulating dissatisfaction. Research (see Crosby, 1982, for an excellent summary) has demonstrated that people who are well off by absolute standards may feel more discontent than those who are much worse off if they feel relatively more deprived because their aspirations are high or they are surrounded by people who are even more well-off than they are. Runciman (1966) has made a distinction between two types of relative deprivation: egoistic and fraternal. Egoistical deprivation occurs when an individual feels disadvantaged relative to other individuals; fraternal deprivation occurs when a person feels his group is disadvantaged in relation to another group. An individual may feel doubly deprived: as an individual and as a group member. As Tajfel (1982) has pointed out, the two kinds of deprivations have different implications for how an individual may improve his situation. To remedy fraternal deprivation, social change (change in the position of one’s group) is necessary; to remedy egoistic deprivation, only change in one’s individual situation is entailed. The greater the magnitude of relative deprivation, the greater the sense of injustice that will be experienced by the oppressed. Members of the relatively advantaged group will be sensitive to the injustices experienced by the oppressed when they are aware that the oppressed are relatively deprived, that they are receiving less than their entitlement.

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An individual’s conception of what it is he and others are entitled to is determined by at least five major kinds of influence: (1) the ideologies and myths about justice that are dominant and officially supported in the society, (2) the amount of exposure to ideologies and myths that conflict with those that are officially supported and are supportive of larger claims for the oppressed, (3) experienced changes in satisfactions-dissatisfactions, (4) knowledge of what others who are viewed as comparable are getting, and (5) perceptions of the bargaining power of the oppressed and oppressors.

The Influence of Ideologies and Myths The official ideology and myths of any society help define and justify the values that are distributed to the different positions within the society; they codify for the individual what a person in his position can legitimately expect. Examples are legion of how official ideology and myth limit or enhance one’s views of what one is entitled to. The American poor offer an instance of the potency of myth in creating an identity that promotes docility in the face of deprivation (Edelman, 1971). Americans are taught by their schools, the mass media, and their political rhetoric that America is the land of equal opportunity. Given such pervasive indoctrination, the poor are apt to attribute their condition to their own failings. This view of themselves as unworthy is further supported by cues from governmental practices toward them which place in question their morality, ambition, and competence. As a result, the poor in America have typically been meek and acquiescent, requiring less coercion and less in benefits than has been true in other developed countries. Similarly, the ideology and myth of white supremacy has led whites to expect that they are entitled to deferential behavior from blacks and blacks to expect that they are not entitled to equal treatment from whites. Similarly, men and women under the influence of a sexist mythology and ideology have defined gender entitlements that give the woman supremacy in the narrow confines of the kitchen and the nursery while men have supremacy in the broad world outside the home as well as in many areas within it.

The Weakening of Official Ideologies It is difficult not to accept the official myths and ideology of one’s society even if they are to one’s disadvantage unless: (1) there is a breakdown of consensual norms and the inability or unwillingness of the ruling elite to act in such a way as to restore these norms; this is likely to occur during a period of rapid social change or intrasocietal conflict, either of which could bring into question the legitimacy of traditional myths and values; (2) there is a failure of the society to deliver the entitlements that it has defined as legitimate for one’s position so that the magnitude of one’s relative deprivation is increased; this could be due to natural or social disasters that worsen the conditions of daily life; or (3) there is exposure to new ideologies and new examples that are accepted as legitimate by many people, which stimulate

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consciousness of new and better possibilities; this could happen as the result of increased communication arising from new technological developments such as books, newspapers, radio, and television, or it may reflect an increased urbanization and the resulting exposure to more diversity of people, ideas, and experience. Obviously, one would expect that the receptivity to new ideologies and examples would be heightened by the breakdown of legitimacy of the existing ideology and the worsening of living conditions.

Experienced Changes in Satisfactions-Dissatisfactions Modifications in the conception of what one is entitled to derive not only from alterations in the ideology and myths that one accepts but also from changes in one’s experiences of satisfactions. A period of gain creates expectations about further improvement. As de Tocqueville in L’Ancien Regime commented: “Only a great genius can save a prince who undertakes to relieve his subjects after a long oppression. The evil, which was suffered patiently as inevitable, seems unendurable as soon as the idea of escaping from it is conceived” (1947, p. 186). Many social scientists, before and after de Tocqueville, have written insightfully about the “revolution of rising expectations” to explain the paradox that social discontent and even revolutionary activity is more likely to occur after social conditions have improved, when there is rising hope, not bleak despair. The explanation generally follows two major lines. First, improvement of social conditions increases aspirations by increasing what is perceived to be possible to attain. Demand may increase at a faster rate than the actual gains received, with a resulting increase in relative deprivation and in the sense of injustice. The increased discontent is most likely to occur if the gains are discontinued or reversed after the initial gains have heightened further expectations. The second explanation of the effects of gains is that the increase is not uniform in all areas in which the victimized are disadvantaged. Improvement in one area, such as education, only makes one more sensitive to the injustice one is experiencing in other areas such as employment, police protection, and housing. Many social scientists have advanced the proposition that status-disequilibrium (such that there are differences in one’s relative statuses in income, education, social prestige, and the like) is a source of tension and discontent (e.g., Davies, 1962; Galtung, 1964; Himmelstrand, 1969). Thus, a very effective way of enhancing the sense of injustice of the victimized is to increase their education and little else.

Comparing Oneself to Others Alterations in the conception of what one is entitled to result not only from changes in the level of satisfaction but also from modifications in one’s views either about how comparable others are being treated or about who should be considered as comparable. There is considerable research evidence that one’s attitude, one’s

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evaluations of one’s abilities, and one’s emotions are very much influenced by one’s perceptions of these attributes in others who are used for comparison purposes (see Pettigrew, 1967, for summary). Although the evidence is by no means conclusive, it has been suggested by Festinger (1954), Gurr (1970), and others that comparison tends to be primarily with similar others, and Gurr further suggests that the comparison will be with the similar others whose gains are most rapid. Thus, if someone else who is perceived to be similar is already better off, then one will feel it is unjust, and if, in addition, the person advances rapidly in status, salary, or the like, one will experience a substantial increase in relative deprivation unless one receives a comparable increase. A potent way of arousing the sense of injustice is to make the victim more aware that comparable others are being treated better or to increase her feeling that it is appropriate to compare herself with others whom she previously considered to be incomparable to herself.

Increasing Bargaining Power One’s perceived power is undoubtedly a factor determining what one is entitled to and with whom one compares oneself to establish one’s entitlements. If a victim or victimized group is dealing with an unresponsive exploitative group, it is faced with either the possibility of resigning into apathy and depression or attempting to increase its power sufficiently to persuade or compel the other to negotiate. Bargaining power is increased by either of two means: increasing one’s own power or decreasing the other’s power. Attempts to change power can be directed at altering the resources that underlie power (such as wealth, physical strength, organization, knowledge, skill, trust, respect, and affection), or it can be directed toward modifying the effectiveness with which the resources of power are employed. The primary resources of the oppressed are discontented people and having justice on their side. The utility of people as a resource of power is a function of their numbers, their personal qualities (such as their knowledge, skill, dedication, and discipline), their social cohesion (as reflected in mutual trust, mutual liking, mutual values, and mutual goals) and their social organization (as expressed in effective cooperation and communication, division of labor, and specialization of function, planning, and evaluation). Numbers of people are obviously important but undoubtedly not as important as their personal qualities, social cohesion, and social organization. A large, inchoate mass of undisciplined, ineffectual people are at the mercy of a small, dedicated, disciplined, well-organized, cohesive group. Most large groups are controlled by less than 10% of their membership. If one examines such low-power minority groups as the Jews, Chinese, and Japanese that have done disproportionately well in the United States and in other countries to which they have migrated, it is apparent that these groups have been characterized by high social cohesion and effective social organization combined with an emphasis upon the development of such personal qualities as skill, dedication, and discipline. Similarly, the effectiveness of such guerrilla forces as the

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Vietcong or such terrorist groups as Al Qaeda has been, in part, due to their cohesion, social organization, and personal dedication. Clearly, the development of these characteristics is of prime importance as a means of increasing the power of one’s group. Elsewhere (Deutsch, 1973), I have considered some of the determinants of cohesion. Here I add that groups become cohesive by formulating and working together on issues that are specific, immediate, and realizable. They become effectively organized as they plan how to use their resources to achieve their purposes and as they evaluate their past effectiveness in the light of their experiences. It is apparent that the pursuit of vague, far-in-the-future, grandiose objectives will not long sustain a group’s cohesiveness. Nor will the exclusive pursuit of a single issue be likely to sustain a long-enduring group unless that issue proliferates into many sub-issues. Those intent upon developing social cohesion and social organization should initially seek out issues that permit significant victories quickly; they will set out on a protracted indeterminate struggle only after strongly cohesive and effective social organizations have been created. So far, I have stressed personal qualities, social cohesion, and social organization as resources that can be developed by low-power groups to enhance their power. Typically, such resources are vastly underdeveloped in victimized groups; however, they are necessary to the effective utilization of almost every other type of resource, including money, votes, tools, force, and the like. Low-power groups often have two other key assets that can be used to amplify their other resources: discontent and the sense of injustice. If intense enough, these may provide the activating motivation and the continuing determination to change the status quo. They are the energizers for individual and social action to bring about change. Moreover, to the extent that the basis for discontent and the nature of the injustice can be communicated to others so that they experience it, if only vicariously, then supporters and allies will be attracted to the side of the low-power group. And increasing the number of one’s supporters and allies is another important way of increasing one’s power. Thus, in a circular way, bargaining power and the sense of injustice mutually reinforce each other: an increase in one increases the other. Discontent and the sense of injustice may be latent rather than manifest in a subordinated group. Neither the consciousness of oneself as victimized or disadvantaged nor the consciousness of being a member of a class of disadvantaged may exist psychologically. If this be the case, consciousness-raising tactics are necessary precursors to the developing of group cohesion and social organization. The diversity of consciousness-raising tactics has been illustrated by the variety of techniques employed in recent years by black power groups, women’s liberation groups, and gay and lesbian groups. They range from quasi-therapeutic group discussion meetings through mass meetings and demonstrations to dramatic confrontations of those in high-power groups. It is likely that a positive consciousness of one’s disadvantaged identity is most aroused when one sees someone, who is considered to be similar to oneself, explicitly attacked or disadvantaged and sees him resist successfully or overcome the attack; his resistance reveals simultaneously the wound and its cure.

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Overcoming Oppression Once the sense of injustice has been awakened, to change the oppressive relation there are basic strategies available: persuasion and power strategies. Each is discussed below.

Persuasion Strategies These strategies are aimed at convincing those in high power to change so that power is shared more equitably and oppressive practices are reduced or eliminated. There are three main types: appeals to moral values; appeals to self-interest; and appeals to self-realization. For excellent discussions of the psychological processes involved in persuasion in conflict and negotiating situations, see Chaiken, Gruenfeld, and Judd (2000); for a systematic discussion of the multiple factors affecting attitude change, see Petty and Wegener (1998).

Appeals to Moral Values These assume that the oppressor is not fully aware of the unjust situation of the oppressed and that if he were so, his conscience or moral values would move him to take action to remedy the situation. The appeals are aimed at both cognitions and affect so that the oppressor can understand how his moral values are being violated by the injustices and can feel sufficiently guilty or outraged to take action to eliminate the injustices. This sort of empathic understanding of the injustices experienced by various subordinated groups can be developed in many ways. The most effective way is by experiencing, directly or indirectly, what it is like to suffer the injustices. Indirect experiences would include conversations with members of an oppressed group about their life experiences; tutored role playing of being a member of such groups; reading autobiographies and novels, watching films and videos which dramatize and make emotionally vivid the experience of injustices; and hearing lectures and sermons which make salient the moral values being violated. If the oppressor believes that he has the moral right to engage in oppressive practices (e.g., beating his wife when she disobeys him), then attempts to create empathic understanding of the situation of the oppressed is not likely to be successful. Here, what is needed is moral authority which he accepts as superior to his (e.g., the legal system, religious authority, the consensus of his peers) to persuade him that he is morally wrong. However, unfortunately in many situations, the powerful are not responsive to moral persuasion because moral authority endorses the oppression or the oppressor is indifferent to moral claims.

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Appeals to Self-Interest Such appeals are often more effective for people who are embedded in an individualistic or competitive society. In such cases, the process of persuasion starts with the communicator’s having a message that he wants to get across to the other. He must have an objective if he is to be able to articulate a clear and compelling message. Further, in formulating and communicating his message, it is important to recognize that it will be heard not only by the other but also by one’s own group and by other interested audiences. The desirable effects of a message on its intended audience may be negated by its unanticipated effects on those for whom it was not intended. I suggest that Acme’s (the oppressed) message to Bolt (the oppressor), to be effective, should include the following elements: 1) A clear statement of the specific actions and changes being requested of Bolt. Bolt should know what is expected of him so that he can fulfill Acme’s expectations if he so desires. Presumably, Bolt is more apt to do what Acme wishes if Bolt believes that it is possible for him to do so. He is more likely to believe that this is the case if Acme’s wants are perceived to be specific and limited rather than if they are viewed as vague and unbounded. 2) An appreciation of the difficulties, problems, and costs that Bolt anticipates if he complies with Acme’s wishes. Such an appreciation should be combined with an expressed willingness to cooperate with Bolt to overcome the difficulties and reduce the costs. This willingness entails a readiness on Acme’s part to consider Bolt’s proposals and counterproposals and to modify his own initial proposals so that a mutually responsive agreement can be reached. 3) A depiction of the values and benefits that Bolt will realize by cooperating with Acme. In effect, if Bolt can be persuaded that he has more to gain than to lose by doing what Acme wants, obviously, he is more likely to do it. The important gains reside in the possibility that Bolt, sharing power with Acme, may enhance Acme’s general cooperativeness and thus markedly increase Bolt’s fulfillment of his own objectives. There are many instances in labor-management, student-faculty, and warden-prisoner relations that indicate that the more powerful party has gained enormously through enhancing the power (and thus sense of responsibility) of the weaker party. In addition, other dissatisfactions that Bolt has experienced in his relationship with Acme may be reduced by Acme’s enhanced cooperativeness. Other sources of potential gain for Bolt reside in the enhanced reputation and goodwill that he will obtain from influential third parties and in the greater fulfillment he will experience when Acme is content rather than dissatisfied with their relationship. 4) A statement of the negative, harmful consequences that is inevitable for Bolt’s values and objectives if Acme’s wishes are not responded to positively. In effect, Bolt has to be led to understand the costs of nonagreement—so that he can realize that the costs of agreement are not the only costs to be taken into account. Potential costs for Bolt of a failure to come to an agreement include: the losses resulting from

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a decrease in Acme’s future cooperativeness, including the possibility of Acme’s total noncooperation; losses in esteem and goodwill; possibly the loss of cooperation of significant third parties; and losses due to active attempts to embarrass, harass, obstruct, or destroy the interests of Bolt by Acme or by his sympathizers. 5) An expression of the power and resolve of Acme to act effectively and unwaveringly to induce Bolt to come to an acceptable agreement. Acme’s unshakable commitment to induce a change may affect Bolt by convincing him that Acme’s needs are serious rather than whimsical and thus deserve fulfillment. It may also persuade Bolt that the pressure from Acme will not diminish until an acceptable agreement has been reached. However, if Bolt has no concern whatsoever for Acme’s needs and no belief that Acme’s pressure will be sufficiently strong to be disturbing, Acme must attempt to develop, mobilize, and publicize its power sufficiently to convince Bolt that negotiation would be a prudent course of action. A message that contains the above elements strongly commits Acme to his objective yet suggests that the means of attaining it are flexible and potentially responsive to Bolt’s views. Because the objective is articulated so as to be specific and limited, it is more likely to be considered by Bolt as feasible for him to accept than is one stated in more generalized and grandiose terms. The message provided Bolt with the positive prospect that changes will result in enhanced social and self-esteem and will yield the benefits to be derived from increased cooperation from Acme. It also indicates the negative results to be expected from lack of change. Although Acme’s firm intent to alter the status quo is made evident, his stance throughout is cooperative. The possibility of a true mutual exchange is kept open with explicit recognition that the dissatisfactions and the problems are not one-sided.

Appeals to Self-Realization These are, also, involved in appeals to self-interest. But here, I am more specifically referring to the distortions of self that are involved in the distorted relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. As Lichtenberg (1990), pp. 191–192) asks: “. . . if the rich are doing so well why aren’t they happy. Why is there so much alcoholism among the power elite, so much drunkenness, so much attachment to non-essentials, like ‘pinstripes on one’s Mercedes’?” For the oppressor to attain an undistorted self, Lichtenberg (1990) suggests that not only must he withdraw from the processes of domination, he must re-own and resolve his feelings of vulnerability, guilt and self-hatred, his rage and terror, and undo the projection of these feelings onto the oppressed. How can the oppressor be helped to this self-realization? Psychologists, in their roles as psychotherapists, marriage counselors, organizational consultants, and educators, have a role to play in demystifying the psychological processes involved in the dominators. So too, I believe, do the oppressed, by not accepting their distorted roles in the distorted relationship of the oppressor and the oppressed.

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Difficulties That Interfere with Use of Persuasive Messages by Low-Power Groups Rage or fear in the low-power group often make it impossible for the members of that group to communicate persuasive messages of the sort described above. Rage leads to an emphasis on destructive, coercive techniques and precludes offers of authentic cooperation. Fear, on the other hand, weakens the commitment to the steps necessary to induce a change and lessens the credibility regarding the idea that compliance will be withdrawn if change does not occur. Rage is potentially a more useful emotion than fear since it leads to actions that are less damaging to the development of a sense of power and, hence, of self-esteem. Harnessed rage or outrage can be a powerful energizer for determined action, and if this action is directed toward building one’s own power rather than destroying the other’s power, the outrage may have a socially constructive outcome. In any case, it is evident that when intense rage or fear is the dominant emotion, the cooperative message outlined here is largely irrelevant. Both rage and fear are rooted in a sense of helplessness and powerlessness; they are emotions associated with a state of dependency. Those in low power can overcome these debilitating emotions by their own successful action on matters of significance to them. In the current slang, they have to “do their own thing”; it cannot be given to them or done for them. This is why my emphasis is on the sharing of power, and thus increasing one’s power to affect one’s fate, rather than on the sharing of affluence. While the sharing of affluence is desirable, it is not sufficient. In its most debilitating sense, poverty is a lack of power and not merely a lack of money. Money is, of course, a base for power, but it is not the only one. If one chooses to be poor, as some members of religious or pioneering groups do, the psychological syndrome usually associated with imposed poverty—a mixture of humiliation, dependency, victimhood, apathy, small time-perspective, suspicion, fear, and rage—is not present. Thus, the ability to offer and engage in authentic cooperation presupposes an awareness that one is neither helpless nor powerless, even though one is at a relative disadvantage. Not only independent action but also cooperative action requires a recognition and confirmation of one’s capacity to “go it alone” if necessary. Unless one has the freedom to choose not to cooperate, there can be no free choice to cooperate. Powerlessness and the associated lack of self- and group esteem are not conducive to either internal group cohesiveness or external cooperation. Power does not, however, necessarily lead to cooperation. This is partly because, in its origin and rhetoric, power of the oppressed group may be oriented against the power of the established and thus likely to intensify the defensiveness of those with high power. However, even if power is “for” rather than “against,” and even if it provides a basis for authentic cooperation, cooperation may not occur because it is of little importance to the high-power group. This group may be unaffected by the positive or negative incentives that the low-power group controls; it does not need their compliance. Universities can obtain new students; the affluent nations no longer are so dependent upon the raw materials produced in the underdeveloped nations; the white industrial society does not need many unskilled black workers.

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Power Strategies Apart from resigning into depression, what can a low-power group do when the dominant group is unwilling to negotiate a change in the status quo? Basically, there is only the possibility of increasing its relative power sufficiently to compel the other to negotiate. Relative power is increased by either of two means: enhancing one’s own power or decreasing the other’s power.

Enhancing One’s Own Power As I have indicated earlier, it involves increasing one’s possession of the resources on which power is based and increasing the effectiveness with which the power is used. There are three areas in which those with low power can find additional resources: within one’s self or group; within potential allies; and within the oppressor. Nelson Mandela (1994) in his autobiographical book, Long Walk to Freedom, provides many illustrations of how he did this even when he was a prisoner of the repressive, apartheid South African government.

Developing Power Within One’s Self or One’s Group By exerting considerable self-discipline while he was a prisoner, Mandela kept himself in excellent physical and mental condition. He stated that when he was a prisoner on Robben Island, the notorious prison island (Mandela, 1994, p. 427): “On Monday through Thursday, I would do stationary running in my cell in the morning for up to 45 min. I would also perform one hundred fingertip push-ups, two hundred sit-ups, fifty deep knee-bends and various other calisthenics.” He kept himself in good shape mentally by reading widely, by becoming an informed expert on the laws and regulations concerning the treatment of prisoners, and by studying for an L.L.B. degree at the University of London. And he kept his self undistorted by preserving his dignity and refusing to submit, psychologically, to the definition of self that the oppressors tried to force upon him. For example, he described the following incident after landing on Robben Island (Mandela, 1995, pp. 297–299): We were met by a group of burly white wardens shouting: “Dis die Eiland! Hier gaan jiell vrek! (This is the island! Here you will die!). . . .” As we walked toward the prison, the guards shouted “Two-two! Two-two! Meaning we should walk in pairs . . .”. I linked up with Tefu. The guards started screaming, “Haas!. . . Haas!” The word haas means “move” in Afrikaans, but it is commonly reserved for cattle. The wardens were demanding that we jog, and I turned to Tefu and under my breath said that we must set an example; if we give in now we would be at their mercy . . . . I mentioned to Tefu that we should walk in front, and we took the lead. Once in front, we actually decreased the pace, walking slowly and deliberately. The guards were incredulous (and said) . . . we will tolerate no insubordination here. Haas! Haas! But we continued at our

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stately pace. (The head guard) ordered us to halt and stood in front of us: “Look, man, we will kill you, we are not fooling around . . . . This is the last warning. Haas! Haas!” To this I said: “You have your duty and we have ours.” I was determined that we would not give in, and we did not, for we were already at the cells.

By his persistent public refusal to be humiliated or to feel humiliated, Mandela rejected the distorted, self-debilitating relationship that the oppressor sought to impose upon him. Doing so enhanced his leadership among his fellow political prisoners and the respect he was accorded by the less sadistic guards and wardens of the prison.

Allies Are Very Important The acquisition of allies is central to enhancing the power of oppressed groups. Leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa devoted considerable effort to developing allies among the leaders of other African nations as well as among many other influential groups in the UN, the Commonwealth, and the various industrial nations with economic ties to South Africa. There is little doubt that the allies they developed played a crucial role in bringing about the ending of the apartheid system and the formation of a new government with Nelson Mandela as President and the ANC as the dominant political party. Their allies did this by bringing sufficient economic, political, and moral pressure upon the apartheid government to convince the economic leaders of the country that a change was necessary if they were to avoid an economic disaster. Unfortunately, sometimes, oppressed groups do not sufficiently realize the important potential for allies among other oppressed groups. They may narrowly define their interests as overcoming the injustices which they are experiencing and are not concerned with those being suffered by other oppressed groups. In the United States, for example, there is not an effective working coalition among such oppressed groups as blacks, gays, women, Hispanics, the disabled, the poor, and the elderly because these separate groups do not define their interests inclusively. While every group has to be for itself, when it is also for others, it becomes stronger from the support it receives.

The Oppressor’s Power Can Often Be Used Against the Oppressor by the Oppressed As Alinsky (1971, p. 152) indicates: “. . . Since the Haves publicly pose as the custodians of responsibility, morality, law and justice (which are frequently strangers to each other), they can be constantly pushing to live up to their own book of morality and regulations. No organization, including religion, can live up to the letter of its own book.”

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Alinsky (1971) cites many examples of tactics in which bureaucratic systems were snarled in their own red tape by pressure to live up to their own formally stated rules and procedures. Tactics of this sort may center upon demanding or using a service that one is entitled to, a service that is not ordinarily used so massively and for which the institution is not prepared to provide in large volume without excessive cost to itself. For example, banks may be disrupted by a massive opening and closing of accounts, department stores by massive returns of purchases, airports by a massive use of their toilets and urinals by visitors, and so forth. Or, the tactics may center upon disobedience to a rule or law that cannot be enforced in the face of massive noncompliance. Thus landlords cannot afford to throw out all tenants who refuse to pay rent in a cohesive rent strike or schools to dismiss all students who disobey an obnoxious school regulation—if the students are united in their opposition. Related to the tactic of clubbing the haves with their own book of rules and regulations is the tactic of goading them into errors such as violating their own rules or regulations. If they can be provoked into an obvious disruption of their own stated principles, then segments of the high-power group may become disaffected, with the resultant weakening of the haves. In addition, previously neutral third parties may, in response to the violations by those in power, swing their sympathies and support to the have-nots. In general, it is a mistake to think that a high-power group is completely unified. Most groups have internal divisions and conflict among their most active members; further, only a small proportion of their members are likely to be active supporters of current policy. The conflicts among those who are active in the high-power groups and the distinction between active and passive members provide important points of leverage for the have-nots. The passive compliance of the inactive majority of the haves may disappear as their leaders are provoked into intemperate errors and as they are subject to ridicule and embarrassment by their inability to cope effectively with the persisting harassments and nuisances caused by the have-nots. The power of the haves, as is true of any group, depends upon such tangibles as control over the instruments of force, an effective communication system, and an effective transportation system and upon such intangibles as prestige and an aura of invincibility. While a low-power group may not be able to interfere seriously with the tangible bases of power of the haves without engaging in illegal, destructive actions of sabotage, it has many legal means of tarnishing and weakening their intangible sources of power. Ridicule and techniques of embarrassment are most effective weapons for this purpose. Here, as elsewhere, inventiveness and imagination play important roles in devising effective tactics. Tactics of embarrassment and ridicule include the picketing of such people as slum landlords, key stockholders, and management personnel of recalcitrant firms and other such wielders of power in situations that are embarrassing to them—e.g., at their homes, at their churches, synagogues, or mosques, or at their social clubs. The advantage of such tactics as ridicule and embarrassment is that they are often enjoyable for those in low power and very difficult for those in high power to cope with without further loss of face.

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Reducing the Power of the Oppressor There are three strategies that are used to weaken oppressors: divide and conquer, violence, and nonviolence. In prior sections, I have alluded to the “divide and conquer” strategy and my emphasis there was on the recognition that there are often potential allies for the oppressed to be found among the oppressors. Even apart from recruiting allies among the oppressors, there is always the possibility of exploiting or creating divisions within this group. Various techniques can be employed in an attempt to create or increase the antagonism among different factions within the oppressors—e.g., planting rumors; creating incidents; making “offers” that favor one faction over another; and distorting their communication processes to one another in such a way that mistrust and hostility are fostered among the different factions.

Violence As a strategy, violence has some positive features but, in my view, it has considerably greater negatives. Its positives are that it gets the attention of those in high power who have previously paid little attention to the oppressed and their needs. Additionally, it may be cathartic and psychologically empowering for those in lowpower groups who feel enraged and humiliated by their oppression. Also, if well focused and executed, it may weaken the oppressed group. Nelson Mandela, at one point, became convinced that nonviolent strategies were not being effective against the apartheid South African government, so he advocated that the African National Congress create a separate, secret group (MK) which would engage in violence. In planning the direction and form this group would take, Mandela (1995, pp. 282–283) indicated that: We considered four types of violent activities: sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, and open revolution. For a small and fledgling army, open revolution was inconceivable. Terrorism inevitably reflected poorly on those who used it, undermining any public support it might otherwise garner. Guerrilla warfare was a possibility, but since the ANC had been reluctant to embrace violence at all, it made sense to start with the form of violence that inflicted the least harm against individuals: sabotage. Because it did not involve loss of life, it offered the best hope for reconciliation among the races afterward. We did not want to start a blood feud between white and black. Animosity between Afrikaner and Englishman was still sharp fifty years after the AngloBoer War; what race relations would be like between white and black if we provoked a civil war? Sabotage had the added virtue of requiring the least manpower. Our strategy was to make selective forays against military installations, power plants, telephone lines, and transportation links, targets that would not only hamper the military effectiveness of the state, but frighten National Party supporters, scare away foreign capital, and weaken the economy. This we hope would bring the government to the bargaining table. Strict instructions were given to members of MK that we would countenance no loss of life.

Mandela was undoubtedly wise in advocating that the violence not be directed at people but rather be directed at targets that would impair the government’s political,

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economic, and military capabilities. Violence against people is apt to weaken the support of existing and potential allies, unify the oppressors, and lead to a vicious spiral of increasing irrational violence. The violence is irrational in that it is impelled by a thirst for vengeance rather than by an attempt to achieve strategic objectives. Violence of any sort against a powerful oppressor usually leads to an intensification of oppression rather than an increased readiness to engage in constructive negotiation. The rare exceptions are when the violence by the oppressed is perceived by both the oppressed and the oppressor, to be part of a rational appeal to the self-interest of the oppressor (i.e., an inevitable cost of refusing to engage in constructive negotiations for a change in the status quo which could be mutually beneficial). And when the oppressor’s response to violence is disproportionate, it may have the effect of delegitimizing the oppressor in the eyes of observers as well as in those of the oppressed. If the observers become active allies of the oppressed, as a consequence of the oppressor’s disproportionate reactive violence, then the balance of power may shift away from the oppressor to the oppressed. I conclude that the use of violence by the oppressed against a much stronger oppressor is most likely to worsen its circumstances and, even in the unlikely possibility of a victory over the oppressor, it is apt to produce leadership among the former oppressed that is undemocratic and predisposed to employing violence in its leadership style.

Nonviolence As a strategy, nonviolence is based on the premise that if we get what we want through violence, we will have created (Holmes, 1990, p. 5) “. . . a certain amount of harm, pain, injury, death, or destruction . . . . We may in addition have created a climate of fear, distrust, or hatred on the part of those against whom we have used the violence. We may also have contributed to the transformation of ourselves into insensitive or even cruel persons . . . . Revolutions, even when they overcome violent resistance . . . often end up building the same sorts of abuses their promoters hoped to eliminate, just as wars set the stage for new wars.” In other words, the nonviolence strategy basically seeks to avoid the harmful effects of physical or psychological violence. Most approaches to nonviolence also assume that, in conflict, one should respect one’s adversary and that even one’s enemy is entitled to care and justice, to compassion and goodwill. Gene Sharp (1971), the most influential student of nonviolence, has identified at least 197 methods of nonviolent actions, which he groups into three categories: (1) Nonviolent protests include marches, picketing, vigils, putting up posters, public meetings, and issuing and distributing protest literature. These methods are meant to produce an awareness of dissent and opposition to unjust policies and practices. Their impact can be large if they awaken the sense of

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injustice in influential potential allies who were not aware of the injustices being experienced. (2) Nonviolent noncooperation includes refusal to comply with unfair rules, regulations, or orders, social economic boycotts, boycotts of elections, general strikes, go-slow actions, rigid enforcement of rules, political jujitsu, civil disobedience, and mutiny. These methods are meant to disrupt the normal efficiency and functioning of the system controlled by the oppressor to indicate that the oppressed will no longer cooperate in their oppression. (3) Nonviolent interventions include sit-ins; nonviolent obstructions of communication facilities, traffic, banks, public toilet facilities, etc.; nonviolent invasions and occupancy; and creation of a parallel government. These methods are most coercive and disruptive of the functioning of the system and are most apt to produce a violent counter-response from those in power.

The use of nonviolent methods requires considerable self-discipline and courage. Systematic training of neophytes in the use of such methods by experienced practitioners makes their implementation more skillful and less dangerous. Training often involves role-playing and rehearsal of the appropriate actions to take in some of the typically difficult and dangerous situations that the nonviolent participants may face as they engage in marches, refusals to comply with regulations, strikes, sit-ins, obstruction of traffic, or other nonviolent methods. There has been no systematic research of which I am aware that attempts to determine the conditions under which nonviolent methods are likely to succeed or fail. There have been many instances of success as well as of failure and it is an area ripe for study. (See Powers, Vogele, Krueglar, & McCarthy, 1997, for many case studies of nonviolent action.) Based upon my very limited knowledge of these instances, I would hypothesize that nonviolent actions are more effective: when they are contesting clear and gross injustices; when they are well-publicized; when they are successful in recruiting others who are oppressed as well as allies among those who are not; and when they occur in a state that is reluctant to employ overwhelming force to repress the nonviolent actions. In a state that controls the media and is repressive, success is unlikely unless the nonviolent actors are able to recruit the employees of the media and members of the police and armed forces to their side. In other words, nonviolent actors are likely to be most successful in democratic societies where repressive force against them is likely to be relatively moderate and is apt to receive widespread, unfavorable publicity and to recruit allies to their cause. Thus, in the United States, the nonviolent civil rights movement was successful partly due to the widespread revulsion against the well-publicized violence used against them by public officials in the South. However, even in autocratically-controlled states—such as apartheid South Africa, the Marcos government in the Philippines, the Shah’s government in Iran, the Milosovic government in Serbia, nonviolence was successful in overthrowing the governments because they were able to enlist the media and members of the armed forces to be against the repression of those seeking change of their oppressive, corrupt government.

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Throughout much of the preceding discussion, I have emphasized the importance for low-power groups to use strategies and tactics which would develop allies among the high-power groups, among other low-power groups, and among third parties. Through their actions and resources, allies can play a vital role in not only awakening the sense of injustice in the oppressors but also by increasing the bargaining power of the oppressed. Additionally, they often can facilitate a constructive, nonviolent process of conflict resolution and social change through the procedures and resources it makes available to foster and maintain such a process. I conclude by stating that my objective in this chapter was to provide a generalized framework for characterizing oppression and the forms it takes, as well as to consider what keeps it in place, and how it can be overcome. I hope this framework can be usefully applied to understand and change oppressive relations between specific groups such as those between men and women, the rich and the poor, managers and workers, parents and children, and between different racial, religious, and ethnic groups.

References Alinsky, S. D. (1971). Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals. New York: Random House. Chaiken, S. L., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Judd, C. M. (2000). In M. Deutsch & P. T. Coleman (Eds.), The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Crosby, F. (1982). Relative deprivation and working women. New York: Oxford University Press. Davies, J. C. (1962). Toward a theory of revolution. American Sociological Review, 27, 5–19. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social-psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1990). Forms of social organization: Psychological consequences. In H. T. Himmelweit & G. Gaskell (Eds.), Societal psychology. London: Sage. Deutsch, M., & Coleman, P. T. (2000). The handbook of conflict resolution: Theory and practice. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Deutsch, M., & Collins, M. E. (1951). Interracial housing. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Deutsch, M., & Steil, J. M. (1988). Awakening the sense of injustice. Social Justice Research, 2, 3–23. Edelman, P. (1971). Politics as symbolic action: Mass arousal and acquiescence. Chicago: Markham. Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. American Psychologist, 16, 1–11. Galtung, J. (1964). Foreign policy position as a function of social position. Journal of Peace Research, 1, 206–231. Gil, D. G. (1998). Confronting injustice and oppression. New York: Columbia University Press. Gurr, T. R. (1970). Why men rebel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Harvey, J. (1999). Civilized oppression. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Hess, D., Bonata, B., and others. (2005). Encyclopedia of selected peaceful societies. On website http://www.peacefulsocieties.org

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Himmelstrand, V. (1969). Tribalism, nationalism, rank-equilibration, and social structures. Journal of Peace Research, 2, 81–104. Holmes, R. L. (Ed.). (1990). Nonviolence in theory and practice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Howell, S., & Willis, R. (Eds.). (1989). Societies at peace: Anthropological perspectives. New York: Routledge. Kahneman, D., Diener, E., & Schwarz, N. (Eds.). (1999). Well-beings: The foundations of hedonic psychology. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Kemp, G., & Fry, D. P. (Eds.). (2004). Keeping the peace: Conflict resolution and peaceful societies around the world. New York: Routledge. Lane, R. E. (2000). Loss of happiness in market democracies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Lichtenberg, P. (1990). Community and confluence. Cleveland, OH: Gestalt Institute of Cleveland Press. Lind, E. A., & Tyler, T. R. (1988). The social psychology of procedural justice. New York: Plenum. Mandela, N. (1994). A long walk to freedom: The autobiography of Nelson Mandela. London: Little, Brown. Mandela, N. (1995). A long walk to freedom: The autobiography of Nelson Mandela. London: Little, Brown. Paperback edition. Mead, M. (Ed.). (1937). Cooperation and competition among primitive peoples. Boston: Beacon. Neckerman, K. M. (Ed.). (2004). Social inequality. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Noel, L. (1994). Intolerance: A general survey. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Opotow, S. V. (1987). Limits of fairness: An experimental examination of antecedents of the scope of justice. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International, Dissertation Information Service. Order #8724072. [Dissertation Abstracts International, 48(08B), 2500.] Opotow, S. V. (1990). Deterring moral exclusion: A summary. Journal of Social Issues, 46(1), 173–182. Opotow, S. V. (1995). Drawing the line: Social categorization, moral exclusion, and the scope of justice. In B. B. Binker & J. Z. Rubin (Eds.), Conflict, cooperation, and justice (pp. 347–369). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Opotow, S. V. (1996a). Is justice finite? The case of environmental inclusion. In L. Montada & M. Lerner (Eds.), Social justice in human relations: Current societal concerns about justice (Vol. 3, pp. 213–230). New York: Plenum. Opotow, S. V. (1996b). Affirmative action, fairness, and the scope of justice. Journal of Social Issues, 52(4), 19–24. Opotow, S. V. (2001). Social injustice. In D. J. Christie, R. V. Wagner, & D. D. Winter (Eds.), Peace, conflict and violence: Peace psychology for the 21st century (pp. 102–109). New York: Prentice-Hall. Perrucci, R., & Wysong, E. (1999). The new class society. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Pettigrew, T. (1967). Social evaluation theory. In D. Levine (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Petty, R. E., & Wegener, D. T. (1998). Attitude change: Multiple roles for persuasion variables. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (Vol. 1, 4th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Powers, T. S., Vogele, W. B., Krueglar, C., & McCarthy, R. M. (Eds.). (1997). Protest, power and change: An encyclopedia of nonviolent action from Act-up to women’s suffrage. New York: Garland. Runciman, W. C. (1966). Relative deprivation and social justice. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Scholz, J. K., & Levine, K. (2004). U. S. black-white inequality. In K. M. Neckerman (Ed.), Social inequality. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Sharp, G. (1971). The politics of nonviolent action: An encyclopedia of thought and action. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press.

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Tajfel, H. (1982). Social identity and intergroup relations. New York: Cambridge University Press. Tocqueville, A. de. (1947). L’ancien regime (M. W. Patterson, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Tyler, T. R., Boeckman, R. J., Smith, H. J., & Huo, Y. J. (1997). Social justice in a diverse society. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Young, M. I. (1990). Justice and the politics of difference. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Chapter 10

Difficulties Awakening the Sense of Injustice and Overcoming Oppression: On the Soporific Effects of System Justification Danielle Gaucher and John T. Jost The most potent weapon in the hand of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. (Steven Biko, 1978) Injustice fares poorly in the spotlight. (Morton Deutsch, 1985)

Statistics suggest that injustice is rife not only in the United States, but around the world. For example, women are significantly more likely to live in poverty than are men (Christopher, England, Phillips, & Smeeding, 2002), Blacks still lack equal access to quality education (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999, pp. 182–188), and the poor are frequently unable to receive adequate health care (Isaacs, Stephen, & Schroeder, 2004). Despite these and many other lamentable disparities, the term oppression— defined loosely and somewhat liberally as the perpetration of “repeated, widespread, systemic injustice” (Deutsch, 2006, p. 10)—is seldom applied to Western societies by social scientists or laypersons. The language of oppression has either fallen from public discourse entirely or is confined to relatively small circles of social activists, who are themselves frequently marginalized by society because of their activism (e.g., see Diekman & Goodfriend, 2007). From the perspective of system justification theory (SJT), which suggests that most people are motivated, at least to some degree, to defend and justify their own social systems (e.g., Jost & Van der Toorn, 2011), it is not surprising that most citizens are reluctant to see their own society as oppressive. Morton Deutsch’s theorizing (1974, 1985, 2006) offers a bold, comprehensive framework for addressing oppression as a system of social arrangements and practices. He stresses the roles and mindsets adopted by members of oppressive societies, in addition to the influences of cultural, political, and economic institutions

This chapter is dedicated to one of our intellectual heroes, Morton Deutsch, who remains a strong role model for any social psychologist who is interested in the study and practice of social justice. For extremely useful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter, we thank Rachel Arnett, Aleksandra Cichocka, Erin Hennes, Anesu Mandisodza, Natasza Marrouch, Andrew Shipley, Caroline Wilmuth, and Jesse Wynhausen. Funding was provided in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and New York University. J.T. Jost (B) New York University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] 227 P.T. Coleman (ed.), Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice, Peace Psychology Book C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8_10, 

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such as the mass media, organized religion, government, business, and educational systems. Deutsch makes clear that oppression is not simply the result of a few powerful groups consciously conspiring to monopolize power, nor is it primarily the product or activities of individual bigots. Rather, oppression typically operates more broadly and much more subtly. Indeed, it may even be considered “civilized,” in that it is experienced as fairly normal in the context of everyday interactions and is woven into the very fabric of their social institutions (cf. Deutsch, 2006; Elias, 1939/1994; Harvey, 1999). For example, Deutsch (1985) argues that social systems act in self-perpetuating ways, so that competitively structured systems elicit selfish, competitive behavior, whereas cooperatively structured systems elicit trusting, cooperative behavior, and so on. This is his so-called “crude law of social relations” (see also Jost & Kay, 2010, p. 1133). In addition to diagnosing the structural mechanics of oppression, Deutsch (2006) offers several recommendations for creating more just social arrangements. These are perhaps most fully expressed in his writings about awakening the sense of injustice (Deutsch, 1974, 1985, 2006; see also Deutsch & Steil, 1988; Fine, 1979). We fully concur that cultivating a sense of injustice and even moral outrage is a necessary precursor of collective action and social change (e.g., see Jost & Kay, 2010; Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007). At the same time, rousing people from their slumbers can be especially difficult because of the presence of system justification motivation (e.g., Jost et al., 2010; Jost, Pietrzak et al., 2008; Kay, Gaucher, et al., 2009). In the remainder of this chapter, we begin by highlighting the main tenets of Deutsch’s account of how to awaken the sense of injustice. Next, we summarize some recent research findings illustrating the soporific effects of system justification motivation, that is, the ways in which it inhibits the awakening of a sense of injustice. By integrating Deutsch’s work with insights garnered from SJT and the broader social psychological literature, we conclude by identifying several ways of encouraging social change without cueing system-defensiveness. In the spirit of Lewin (1944/1951), Deutsch (1999), and their many students and admirers, we can only hope that these ideas move us closer to the creation and implementation of better and more just societies. The idea is that increasing awareness of the social psychological dynamics whereby members of both advantaged and disadvantaged groups contribute to the legitimacy and stability of the status quo, often unwittingly, may help to promote the goals of overcoming oppression and bringing about meaningful social change.

Deutsch’s Framework for Understanding Oppression and Social Change No doubt, feelings of relative deprivation—i.e., perceiving a discrepancy between what individuals or groups believe they are entitled to and what they actually obtain—are critical to awakening the sense of injustice (see also Tyler &

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Smith, 1998). Deutsch (2006) observes that, “the greater the magnitude of relative deprivation, the greater the sense of injustice that will be experienced by the oppressed” (p. 24). For protest to occur, the experience of fraternal deprivation (the individual’s sense that his or her group is disadvantaged relative to other groups) must be present (Crosby, 1976; Runciman, 1966; Walker & Smith, 2002). Gurr (1970) famously assumed that, “men are quick to aspire beyond their social means and quick to anger when those means prove inadequate, but slow to accept their limitations” (p. 58). However, the social psychological literature suggests that the matter is far more complicated than this, in part because of social, cognitive, and motivational processes that lead individuals to tolerate deprivation and injustice (e.g., Fine, 1979; Major, 1994; see also Jost & Kay, 2010, pp. 1135–1136). Deutsch (1985) wrote poignantly about the problem of self-blame in cases of extreme deprivation: Although the need to maintain a positive self-regard is common, it is not universal. The victim of injustice, if he views himself favorably, may be outraged by his experience and attempt to undo it; in the process of so doing, he may have to challenge the victimizer. If the victimizer is more powerful than he and has the support of the legal and other institutions of the society, he will realize that it would be dangerous to act on his outrage or even to express it. Under such circumstances, in a process that Anna Freud (1937) labeled ‘identification with the aggressor,’ the victim may control his dangerous feelings of injustice and outrage by denying them and by internalizing the derogatory attitudes of the victimizer toward himself . . . . Thus, he will become in Lewin’s terms (1935) a ‘self-hater’ who attributes blame for his victimization upon himself or his group.

Deutsch’s observation that there is a potential for conflict between the needs of the self and the demands of the system provided considerable inspiration for SJT. Specifically, it is a postulate of the theory that for those who are disadvantaged (but not advantaged), system justification motives are in conflict or contradiction with ego and group justification motives (Jost, Burgess, & Mosso, 2001). Indeed, studies show that for members of disadvantaged groups, system justification tendencies are negatively associated with self-esteem, ingroup favoritism, and long-term psychological well-being (e.g., Jost & Thompson, 2000; O’Brien & Major, 2005). Deutsch (2006) theorizes that the process whereby members of advantaged groups become sensitized to injustice in the social system is similar to the awakening process involving members of disadvantaged groups. That is, he assumes that the consciences of would-be oppressors will be pricked when they are made aware of the extent to which others are relatively deprived, i.e., obtaining outcomes that are worse than those to which they are entitled (see also Leach, Snider, & Iyer, 2002). Of course, perceptions of entitlement (with regard to the self and others) are influenced by several factors (e.g., Jost & Kay, 2010; Major, 1994), two of which we highlight here. First, and foremost, Deutsch (2006) writes that “official” ideologies and myths serve to perpetuate certain beliefs about entitlement—a point that is echoed by SJT. System-justifying ideologies, such as the Protestant Work Ethic and other meritocratic belief systems, perpetuate the assumption that people generally get what they deserve and deserve what they get, while deflecting blame away from the system

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(Jost & Hunyady, 2005). It is only by discrediting these ideologies, Deutsch writes, that expectations about what people deserve in life can change, and a sense of injustice may develop. According to Deutsch, belief systems such as these are vulnerable to attack during times of rapid social change, when there is a breakdown of consensual norms, and the elite are unable to quickly and effectively restore them. Under these circumstances, people may be exposed to alternative ideologies and new types of social arrangements that gain rapid acceptance. These proposals comport well with sociological theories of revolution (e.g., Johnson, 1966; Skocpol, 1994) and the transition from socialist to capitalist regimes in Eastern bloc countries (see Kluegel, Mason, & Wegener, 1995). The ratio of satisfaction to dissatisfaction that people experience in their daily lives, according to Deutsch, is another factor that can modify their sense of entitlement and therefore the likelihood that they will protest against injustice. When aspirations rise more quickly than actual outcomes, people may experience relative deprivation (Gurr, 1970). Thus, improvement in one area of an individual’s life may increase sensitivity to injustices experienced in other areas of his or her life. Moreover, Deutsch (2006) proposes that “a potent way of arousing the sense of injustice is to make the victim more aware that comparable others are being treated better or to increase her feeling that it is appropriate to compare herself with others whom she previously considered to be incomparable to herself” (Deutsch, 2006, p. 27). Such interventions might indeed help to mitigate the effects of “social comparison biases [that] tend to prevent awareness of disadvantage” and “attribution biases [that] tend to legitimize disadvantage” (Major, 1994, p. 294; see also Jost & Kay, 2010). Awakening the sense of injustice, as we have said, is almost surely a necessary precursor to social change. Feelings of deprivation and injustice tend to incite moral outrage, which motivates collective action aimed at redress (e.g., Boll, Ferring, & Filipp, 2005; Montada & Schneider, 1989; Tyler & Smith, 1998; Van Zomeren, Postmes, & Spears, 2008; Wakslak et al., 2007). However, a growing body of work suggests that the acknowledgement of injustice and the feelings of relative deprivation and moral outrage that follow it are sometimes very difficult to arouse. One reason for this is that system justification motivation puts members of advantaged and disadvantaged groups “to sleep” in an ideological sense. In the next section we outline some of the basic tenets and findings of SJT, highlighting ways in which system justification undermines prospects for social change and the attainment of social justice (see also Jost & Kay, 2010, pp. 1148–1150).

System Justification Theory SJT holds that all individuals, to varying degrees according to situational and dispositional factors, are consciously or unconsciously motivated to rationalize away the moral and other failures of their social, economic, and political systems (e.g., Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004; Jost & Van der Toorn, 2011). Typically, members

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of advantaged groups are more likely than members of disadvantaged groups to endorse system-justifying beliefs, presumably because such beliefs are also consistent with ego and group justification motives (e.g., Jost & Thompson, 2000). However, there are cases in which members of disadvantaged groups profess the legitimacy of the status quo even more strenuously than do members of advantaged groups (e.g., Henry & Saul, 2006). For instance, those who are very poor are more likely than those who are not to believe that “large differences in income are important” and legitimate (Jost, Pelham, Sheldon, & Sullivan, 2003, Study 3). The motivation to defend the legitimacy of one’s social system is hypothesized to satisfy a broad constellation of epistemic needs to attain certainty and create a stable, orderly worldview; existential needs to assuage threat and perceive a safe, secure environment; and relational needs to affiliate and share common ground with important others, including friends and family members who are motivated by system justification needs of their own (Jost, Ledgerwood, & Hardin, 2008). According to SJT, all members of society, at least to some degree, are motivated to justify their socio-political systems; even those who are oppressed will sometimes hold beliefs and act in ways that support the very system that keeps them in a state of deprivation. Thus, it is not only “the oppressors” who wield ideologies and “the social institutions of society to legitimize their superiority and to ignore or minimize the identity of the oppressed” (Deutsch, 2006, p. 18). This makes it especially difficult to “awaken” the sense of injustice. This last point is frequently overlooked but is an essential piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding how exploitative and oppressive situations are maintained (see also Hochschild, 1981; Jost, 1995, 2011; Kluegel & Smith, 1986; Lane, 1962).

Internalization of Inferiority System justification theorists emphasize that both the oppressor and oppressed contribute to a system in which oppressive relationships are maintained. Whereas Deutsch (2006) focuses on the fear that the oppressed have of their own rage and the guilt they carry from having participated in oppressive relationships, SJT focuses on their need to justify their socio-political systems in order to satisfy the same underlying epistemic, existential, and relational needs that would-be oppressors also possess. In this way, both Deutsch and system justification theorists propose that the oppressed have internalized a sense of inferiority at the personal and/or group level of analysis—but the internalization is hypothesized by the two theories to arise from different psychological processes. Depressed entitlement among women. As Deutsch (2006) notes, “many who experience oppression in some aspects of their life do not necessarily experience it in other aspects” (p. 21). Thus, it is not necessary to assume that women as a group are always or necessarily “oppressed” in order to learn something valuable about the perpetuation of inequality from studies of gender dynamics. Indeed, one of the most common examples of internalized inferiority concerns the phenomenon

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of depressed entitlement among women (Major, 1994) and other low-income earners (Pelham & Hetts, 2001). In numerous studies, when they are asked to determine an appropriate salary for themselves, women consistently pay themselves less money than men do for the same quantity and quality of work—at least in the absence of clear-cut standards of comparison (e.g., see Jost, 1997; Major, 1994; Major, McFarlin, & Gagnon, 1984). O’Brien and Major (2009, p. 234) found that stronger endorsement of systemjustifying beliefs was associated with (a) a greater sense of entitlement among men, and (b) a lesser sense of entitlement among women, just as SJT would predict. Furthermore, they conducted an experiment in which incidental exposure to meritocratic ideology (i.e., mindset priming) caused men to report that they deserved more pay and women to report that they deserved less pay, although the difference between conditions for women did not attain conventional levels of statistical significance (see O’Brien & Major, 2009, pp. 434–436). Self-objectification. Depressed entitlement is but one example of how the disadvantaged play a role in their own subjugation. Calogero and Jost (2011) have suggested that self-objectification among women, whereby women see themselves as sexual objects for the use of men, is yet another way in which gender disparities are unwittingly perpetuated (e.g., see Fredrickson, Roberts, Noll, Quinn, & Twenge, 1998). A series of experiments shows that incidental exposure to certain types of gender stereotypes not only leads women to show more ideological support for the status quo, including the existing division of labor between men and women in society (Jost & Kay, 2005), but it also leads women (but not men) to objectify their own bodies more, engage in self-surveillance, and experience more body shame (Calogero & Jost, 2011). Consistent with the notion that system justification is linked to epistemic motivation, stereotype exposure resulted in greater self-objectification for women who scored high on the need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski & Webster, 1996). Implicit and explicit outgroup favoritism. Of course, the internalization of inferiority is by no means confined to women as a group. Members of disadvantaged groups frequently evaluate advantaged groups more favorably than they evaluate themselves, both in terms of explicit stereotypes about intelligence, industriousness, and competence and also in terms of more general implicit associations (for reviews, see Dasgupta, 2004; Jost et al., 2004). Implicit outgroup favoritism is more pronounced when the perceived status gap between advantaged and disadvantaged groups is larger (Rudman, Feinberg, & Fairchild, 2002; Uhlmann, Dasgupta, Elgueta, Greenwald, & Swanson, 2002) and for members of disadvantaged groups who endorse system-justifying belief systems (Ashburn-Nardo, Knowles, & Monteith, 2003), including political conservatism (Jost et al., 2004). Variables, such as system threat, that activate system justification motivation also tend to increase stereotypic outgroup favoritism on dimensions that serve to rationalize the status quo. For instance, exposure to a system-threatening passage led Sephardic Jews in Israel to state that Ashkenazi Jews were more intelligent, ambitious, responsible, hard-working, and educated, in comparison with their own group (e.g., Jost, Kivetz, Rubini, Guermandi, & Mosso, 2005, Study 3).

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The Process of Injunctification According to SJT, people are motivated to justify the status quo—regardless of whether it is good for them or not. In a series of experimental studies, Kay, Gaucher, and their colleagues (2009) demonstrated the existence of injunctification, a motivational process whereby individuals rationalize the way things “are” as the way they “should be” in a wide range of domains. These experiments included manipulations that were designed to activate system justification motivation, namely: (a) increased dependence on their system (i.e., stressing that important life outcomes are contingent on the system that affects participants), (b) system inescapability (i.e., suggesting that it is difficult or impossible to leave the system), and (c) system threat (i.e., challenging the legitimacy or stability of the status quo). These manipulations have been found to increase subtle, indirect forms of system justification without affecting participants’ subjective identification with the system per se (see Kay et al., 2009). The results were striking. When system justification motivation was activated, individuals were significantly more likely to injunctify the status quo, even if the status quo flouted egalitarian values. In a study of attitudes concerning gender diversity within the Canadian parliament, for instance, female participants whose system justification motivation had been activated rated women as less “desirable” and less “ideal” as Members of Parliament when they were led to believe that there were very few women in politics, in comparison with female participants who were led to believe that there were many female Members of Parliament (Kay et al., 2009, Study 3). Similar results were observed in a study of attitudes concerning women in business. When system justification motivation had been activated (i.e., under conditions of system threat), people rated female CEOs as less desirable when they were led to believe that the status quo engendered relatively little (vs. more) gender diversity within top fortune 500 businesses (Kay et al., 2009, Study 4). Importantly, participants negatively rated others who behaved in a manner that was inconsistent with an injunctified status quo. That is, female participants who were told that there were few female CEOs not only stated that there should be fewer female CEOs when system justification motivation was high (vs. low), but they also judged a specific female business student to be less likable, competent, and professional.

System Justification as Implicit Goal Pursuit Other laboratory work has revealed that the motivation to justify the system can operate on an implicit level of awareness, through goal-pursuit principles. For example, exposure to a system-threatening passage led participants to show heightened accessibility of justice-related concepts on an implicit measure, but only as long as the goal to justify the system remained active (Liviatan & Jost, 2010, Study 1; see also Kay & Jost, 2003). When the individual’s need to justify the system was

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fulfilled through a system affirmation task (designed to affirm rather than threaten the legitimacy of one’s system), participants no longer displayed heightened accessibility of justice-related concepts (Liviatan & Jost, 2010, Study 2). Thus, system justification motivation manifests itself not only in terms of explicit processes such as stereotyping and injunctification of the status quo. It also operates implicitly, and automatically, without conscious awareness of the fact that the desire to perceive a legitimate status quo is a goal-directed mechanism (see also Jost, Pietrzak, et al., 2008).

System Justification Inhibits Justice-Promoting Behaviors It is conceivable that despite implicit and explicit motivational processes that contribute to a general preference for the status quo, people are still highly receptive to cues of injustice and actions aimed at correcting injustice. In fact, Lerner (1980) suggested that the belief in a just world (a general, all-purpose system-justifying belief) emerges out of the “justice motive” (a genuinely altruistic concern that justice is achieved). Unfortunately, however, we find a negative relationship between system justification and justice-seeking behavior. For example, Wakslak et al. (2007) conducted an experiment in which half of the participants were primed with a high system-justifying mindset by reading a series of “rags-to-riches” essays emphasizing how hard work leads to great success, whereas the other half were not. In an ostensibly separate study on “community service attitudes,” these participants were asked how much negative affect and moral outrage they felt over injustice and inequality generally (e.g. “I feel really angry when I learn about people who are suffering from injustice”), as well as how supportive they were of various redistributive policies. Individuals assigned to the high system justification condition reported less negative affect in general and less moral outrage in particular, in comparison with those assigned to the low system justification condition. Furthermore, moral outrage mediated the dampening effect of system justification on support for helping and redistribution, which is consistent with other work suggesting that moral outrage is required to take action (e.g., Dubé & Guimond, 1986; Guimond & Dambrun, 2002; Van Zomeren et al., 2008). A study conducted by Gaucher, Chua, and Kay (2008) similarly found that system justification tendencies (as measured in terms of scores on the Kay and Jost [2003] scale) were negatively associated with activist behavior in response to a putative injustice ascribed to the Canadian health care system. More specifically, Canadians who scored higher (vs. lower) on the system justification scale wrote fewer protest postcards when given the opportunity, and they were less likely to feel that Canadians “should be concerned” that people with lower socio-economic status (SES) receive poorer quality health care than those with higher SES. On the issue of access to health care and many others, system justification appears to exert a soporific effect, making it more difficult to awaken the sense of injustice.

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Social Costs of Challenging the System As Deutsch (1985) points out, some people are not sensitized to injustice and do indeed speak out against it. At the same time, there are often stiff social costs for individuals who oppose mainstream ideologies, attempt to espouse new ones, or claim that current social arrangements are unjust. For example, Kaiser and Miller (2001) showed that African Americans who attribute their poor test performance to discrimination, rather than to internal factors, are more likely to be viewed by European Americans as complainers and trouble-makers. Importantly, these effects emerge only when African Americans make system-threatening attributions for their poor performance. When they make external attributions for their poor performance that are unrelated to discrimination, there are no apparent social costs. Moreover, individuals who endorse system-justifying beliefs, such as social dominance orientation and just world beliefs (see Jost & Hunyady, 2005), are especially likely to disparage African Americans who claim discrimination (Kaiser, Dyrenforth, & Hagiwara, 2006). Kaiser and Pratt-Hyatt (2009, Study 6) found that Whites expressed more favorable attitudes toward a Black individual who was low (vs. high) in ethnic group identification—unless he was described as endorsing system-justifying beliefs. Acting in a manner that contradicts widely held prescriptive norms and stereotypes can also elicit social sanctions. For instance, women who behave in counterstereotypical ways often experience backlash and are punished both socially and economically for their counter-normative behavior (see Eagly & Karau, 2002; Rudman & Fairchild, 2004; Rudman & Glick, 1999, 2001). In one experiment, people disagreed more with, and wanted to be less close to, someone who called herself a “feminist” (vs. someone who did not use this term) and these effects were more pronounced when system justification motivation was activated (Yeung & Kay, 2007). Experiences of marginalization and backlash almost surely encourage those who challenge the status quo to conceal their behavior and adhere to prescriptive norms and expectations, thereby serving to perpetuate them.

Summary System justification theory reminds us that it is far more difficult to get people to acknowledge and speak out against injustice than is commonly assumed. In the service of broader epistemic, existential, and relational needs, people tend to favor the status quo and justify the legitimacy of the socio-political systems that affect them. People tend to injunctify prevailing social arrangements—judging them to be “most desirable,” regardless of how unfair they might seem to others (Kay et al., 2009). Consistent with Deutsch’s (1985, 2006) observations, exposure to systemjustifying myths reduces individuals’ sense of moral outrage, thereby undermining their degree of support for policies aimed at redressing injustice and inequality (Wakslak et al., 2007). Because the motive to justify the status quo frequently operates implicitly and automatically (Liviatan & Jost, 2010), it is not easy to avoid

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or override. Furthermore, those who are sensitized to injustice and voice system criticisms often face negative social repercussions that almost certainly reduce the likelihood that they (or others) will speak out against the system in the future (e.g., Kaiser et al., 2006). Because system justification motivation exerts soporific effects such as these, it is often extremely difficult to “awaken the sense of injustice,” as Deutsch (1974) put it. In the next section we explore ways of encouraging social change that do not depend upon ideological “alarm clocks” but rather seek to circumvent system justification motivation and to minimize resistance to change and defensiveness on behalf of the status quo.

System-Sanctioned Change: Harnessing the Power of System Justification Motivation to Bring About Social Change Because SJT emphasizes social, cognitive, and motivational processes that lead people to justify and rationalize their socio-political systems, it is sometimes suggested that the theory cannot account for the phenomenon of social change (e.g., Reicher, 2004; Rubin & Hewstone, 2004). There are several reasons why this is not the case. First, SJT highlights the motivational significance of ego and group justification motives, both of which can override system justification motives to produce a motivation for change in a given situation (e.g., Jost et al., 2001). For another, SJT suggests that most (but not all) individuals will tend to resist changes to the status quo, but once it appears highly likely that a new regime will take its place, these same individuals will engage in anticipatory rationalization of the new status quo (Kay, Jimenez, & Jost, 2002), thereby hastening its arrival. Moreover, a new line of system justification research has begun to investigate ways in which the system justification motive can be co-opted, or harnessed, in the service of constructive social change. Here we follow Deutsch’s (2006) example in seeking to identify “nonviolent strategies and tactics for overcoming oppression” (p. 8). The idea is that potential changes to the status quo will be regarded as more palatable to the extent that they are “system-sanctioned,” that is, seen as arising from, or having strong connections with, the overarching social system. Although this tactic is probably more commonly exercised on the political right than the left, our research suggests that a wide variety of proposals for social change may gain support and legitimacy through their association with the status quo. For instance, Feygina, Jost, and Goldsmith (2010) found that people (especially political conservatives and those who score high on system justification) are likely to deny environmental problems associated with global climate change and to resist efforts to change personal and public policies when it comes to the environment. However, when pro-environmental initiatives were described as “patriotic” and congruent with the goal of preserving the “American way of life,” resistance to change was curtailed, and high system-justifiers were significantly more likely to express pro-environmental intentions, such as using only recyclable products, cutting down on electricity, and providing financial support to pro-environmental groups, as well

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as increased willingness to sign a pro-environmental petition. In the optimistic spirit of Deutsch (1985, 2006), we discuss several other potential ways of bringing about social betterment by working with rather than against system justification motivation. We note, however, that some of these ideas are speculative and have yet to be tested empirically.

Appealing to System Ideals A close variant of Feygina et al.’s (2010) technique of framing potential changes as congruent with rather than upsetting to the status quo is the technique of appealing to presently unmet ideals of the overarching social system. Perhaps no one in U.S. history was as skilled as Martin Luther King, Jr. in implementing this rhetorical device. In one famous speech, King exclaimed that: [W]hen the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness . . . I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” (August 28, 1963)

King’s extraordinary success in building broad-based support for the civil rights movement might well have derived in part from his remarkable ability to frame demands for social justice as congruent with ethical imperatives that were officially enshrined in the founding documents of American society. To the extent that King’s remarks increased what Deutsch (1985) referred to as “identification with the underdog,” they probably heightened “the awareness of injustice among the oppressors by the increased political and intellectual attention paid to it” (p. 48). The strategy was successful because, as Deutsch wrote, “injustice fares poorly in the spotlight.” Martin Luther King Jr.’s approach is frequently contrasted with that of Malcolm X, who more directly attacked the American social system as illegitimate, at least in some speeches, such as this one. No I’m not an American, I’m one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy . . . . I’m speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of a victim. I don’t see any American dream; I see an American nightmare. (April 3, 1964)

Such claims almost surely elicited strong, reflexive ideological defensiveness on behalf of the system, in large part because of system justification motivation. Of course, Malcolm X’s goal in these and other speeches was not to broker compromise with Whites but rather to unify and inspire Blacks so that they would take action. As he put it, “Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change.” In other words, Malcolm X’s rhetoric was aimed at increasing group justification and system

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criticism among Blacks; that it stirred up defensive, group- and system-justifying motivation on the part of most Whites was probably inevitable. Malcolm X did not believe in “the American Dream,” but millions of Americans clearly do. Some may even believe in it more than they realize. For example, Ledgerwood, Mandisodza, Jost, and Pohl (2011, Study 1) demonstrated that even people who explicitly reject the notion that the U.S. is currently a meritocratic society exhibit a pro-meritocracy bias: evaluating the quality of scientific evidence more favorably when the data support rather than challenge the notion that hard work leads to success in American society. As in many other studies, this systemserving bias is exacerbated by exposure to system threat. Additional experiments by Ledgerwood et al. (2011) showed that when participants are confronted with a threat to meritocratic ideals (that is, when they are told that luck rather than effort predicts success on anagram problem-solving tasks) they work harder on an anagram task in an apparent attempt to restore faith in meritocratic ideology—but only when they were led to believe that they were participating in a study about the relationship between effort and doing well in “American Society.”

Appeals Made by System-Sanctioned Leaders Potential changes that are attributed to or associated with system-sanctioned leaders and authorities may have the best chance of earning widespread support, especially when system justification needs are activated. Along these lines, Gaucher, Peach, and Kay (2010) conducted an experiment in which students learned that one of two groups on campus (either a system-sanctioned university administration group or a non-sanctioned student group) was calling for pro-environmental changes to university food, student, and plant operation policies. To investigate the role of system justification motivation, half of the participants were first exposed to a system dependence manipulation in which they were reminded of how their outcomes in life were greatly dependent on their university; this manipulation has been shown in several studies to increase system justification tendencies (see also Van der Toorn, Tyler, & Jost, 2011). As hypothesized, under conditions of system dependence, participants were more likely to support pro-environmental policy changes when they were endorsed by the university administration than by fellow students. Increased support for pro-environmental change in the system dependence condition was partially driven by students’ perceptions of the legitimacy and benevolence of the pro-environmental university administration group (Gaucher et al., 2010).

Reframing the Status Quo Research on injunctification, which we have summarized above, indicates that because individuals are motivated to justify their socio-political systems, they tend to construe the status quo (what “is”) as normatively desirable (what “should” or

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“ought to be”; see Kay, Gaucher, et al., 2009). Work by Moshinsky and Bar-Hillel (2010) similarly suggests that there is a “status quo labeling bias,” so that people judge the same policy as more attractive when it is described as part of the current status quo than when it is not. Eidelman, Crandall, and Pattershall (2009), too, have identified what they refer to as an “existence bias,” whereby existing (and highly anticipated) states of affairs are evaluated more favorably than alternatives. All of these results, which strike us as readily interpretable within a system justification framework, suggest that it may be possible to win support for social change by reframing how individuals think about the status quo. For example, Friesen, Gaucher, and Kay (2010) demonstrated that it is possible to increase women’s interest in political participation (including voting) by (a) activating system justification motivation, and (b) exposing women to information suggesting that female representation in the Canadian Parliament was likely to be quite high in the immediate future. Under these conditions, women injunctified the anticipatory status quo, assuming that women’s increased role in politics was desirable. In an additional experiment, only the perception of the number of women in national politics was varied by presenting participants with graphs that were either stretched or compressed to suggest that women were either highly represented or not. Here, too, people’s subjective impressions of the number of women in politics affected their judgments of whether women should be in politics. That some ways of reframing the status quo (e.g., shortening the Y-axis on a graph of women in government) do not require outright deception is important to note for those interested in instituting public interventions. Status quo labeling and reframing could be employed outside of the laboratory to usher in more equitable arrangements in society simply by changing individuals’ perceptions of what is or what will be and therefore what should be. An additional advantage is that such techniques should minimize system-justifying forms of backlash. Thus, to the extent that members of society view women’s role in politics as more substantial and therefore more desirable, they should be more likely to embrace rather than criticize those women who enter into the political arena.

Satisfying Underlying Epistemic, Existential, and Relational Needs Finally, changes to the system may also be more palatable when they appeal directly to underlying epistemic, existential, and relational needs, such as needs for order, predictability, security, and affiliation. Consistent with the foregoing, changes that are framed as “maintaining” and “preserving” the current system are more likely to be embraced—especially by conservatives and others who harbor special affinities for order, stability, and structure (see Jost, Nosek, & Gosling, 2008)—than are changes that imply upheaval. The satisfaction of underlying motives need not be overt or explicit in order to be effective. For instance, Stapel and Noordewier (2011) found that simply allowing participants to solve a jigsaw puzzle (thereby satisfying their need for order) eliminated the deleterious effects of system threat

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on stereotyping. Dissertation research by Thorisdottir and Jost (2011) demonstrated that threat increases psychological needs for certainty and closure, which generally favor conservative ideology. However, describing a liberal policy initiative using certainty-oriented language made that policy more appealing to participants who had been shown a frightening film (but not an amusing one). These findings suggest that it may be possible to increase support for social change and justice initiatives by proactively satisfying rather than triggering epistemic, existential, and relational motives that give rise to system-justifying preferences and outcomes.

Concluding Remarks Although Deutsch (1985) is surely right that “injustice fares poorly in the spotlight,” it is also true that awakening the sense of injustice can be surprisingly difficult. In part because of system justification motivation, members of disadvantaged and oppressed groups frequently internalize a sense of inferiority and a depressed sense of entitlement. This is why, as Deutsch (1985) observes, “consciousness-raising tactics are necessary precursors to the developing of group cohesion and social organization” (p. 58). As a general rule, however, people are not especially receptive to messages that challenge the legitimacy of the status quo. Rather, they often respond defensively to such challenges and resist changes that might bring about a better, more just state of affairs. This is because many people—and not just the “oppressors” (if they could be identified and singled out)—have “developed a vested interest in preserving the status quo,” which means that it is necessary that “their rationalizations [be] exposed as false before their sense of justice will be activated” (Deutsch, 1985, p. 60). From the perspective of a social activist, these results are troubling, even depressing. There are numerous soporific consequences of system justification motivation, all of which probably hamper well-intentioned efforts to awaken a sense of injustice. Furthermore, ideological “alarm clocks” are often bound to fail, insofar as they put people on the defensive. But perhaps the situation is not quite as dire as these observations would suggest. Recent work suggests that it may be possible to harness the motivation to justify the social system in order to usher in new and better social arrangements. Specifically, by framing potential innovations as “system-sanctioned,” that is, congruent with rather than threatening to the goals and traditions of the establishment, it is possible to minimize ideological defensiveness and resistance to change. At the end of the day, it may be that carefully crafted appeals to ideals of the system, such as egalitarianism, may be most effective in dismantling oppression and eliminating social injustice, because they are able to circumvent knee-jerk reactions to defend and protect the status quo. The genius of Martin Luther King, Jr. consisted, at least in part, in his ability to do this. Of course, the demands of social justice sometimes require one to fight against oppressive systems without softening the message or appealing to traditional authorities, symbols, or customs for legitimacy. This was

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clearly Malcolm X’s approach. Although Deutsch (2006) clearly favors nonviolent methods of bringing about social change, he recognizes that there are circumstances in which sabotage and other direct forms of action may produce positive results (p. 37). The perennial problem faced by scholars and practitioners of social justice, however, is that it may be impossible to know for sure whether a flawed system can be patiently reformed or whether the only reasonable option is to foment conflict prior to seeking reconciliation.

Morton Deutsch’s Comments Chapter by Danielle Gaucher and John T. Jost I am delighted by the chapter. It deals with an important issue that has puzzled me and many others. Why do many people who are subjected to injustice seem insensitive to it? Why do many vote for candidates who support policies that contribute to the injustices to which they are subjected? System Justification Theory (SJT), explained in this chapter, goes a long way to provide an answer to this puzzle. SJT has given rise to many interesting research studies which clearly support the theory. The theory and research suggest that people have a conservative bias which supports the status-quo. This bias arises from “the motivation to defend the legitimacy of one’s social system” because doing so satisfies epistemic, existential, and relational needs. This is an important contribution in providing another reason why basic social change is often so difficult to achieve. Yet I do have some questions about SJT. What are its limits? I don’t think SJT theorists believe it applies to: revolutionists who seek to overthrow the existing social system (such as the Russian communists who overthrew the Tsarist government); or to dissenters (such as Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese Nobel Prize winner who is kept in jail by the Chinese government); or to refugees who flee an oppressive system; or to the swindlers who exploit the weaknesses of a social system to systematically use the vulnerabilities of others for their own profit (such as sex traffickers, Madoff). The chapter does highlight “the motivational significance of ego and group justification motives, both of which can override system justification motives.” The conditions which can lead to the overriding of SJT are not yet well specified in the theory. However, I believe that SJT is easily applicable to explain the emergence of many movements for social change: including both conservative and liberal movements. These movements profess that they are defending the basic values of the social system by opposing violations of these values. Thus, the Tea Party movement presents itself as defenders of individual freedom by trying to reduce the government’s power to control individual lives through taxation and various forms of regulation. Liberal groups appeal to basic values

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of equality and seek to have the government act to foster equal opportunity for good education, accessible medical care, safe food, etc., and to prevent discrimination against members of ethnic, racial, religious, gender, gay and lesbian groups. My impression is that, currently, conservative political groups are more active in appealing to basic values in the system to support their cause than are liberal groups. SJT theory would, I believe, indicate that if liberal groups want more success in bringing about social change, they should frame their programs as reinforcing basic values of our system. One final point. SJT recognizes that other needs than the epistemic, existential, and relational needs can lead to the acceptance of an unjust system or unjust treatment by those who are subjected to systemic oppression or unfair treatment. However, I think they do not consider the role of fear sufficiently. In segments of democratic societies, as well as in totalitarian societies, it is not uncommon to employ physical and psychological violence against underdogs, deviants, dissidents, or others who appear to challenge existing social norms. This is why it takes great courage for an economically dependent wife to directly challenge her abusive husband, for a citizen in China to actively oppose governmental policies, and for a subordinate who needs the job to challenge her humiliating superior. Discontent and the sense of injustice may be latent rather than manifest because of fear. It is likely that a positive consciousness of one’s disadvantaged identity is more aroused when one sees someone, who is similar to oneself, attacked or disadvantaged and sees her resist successfully to overcome the attack; her resistance reveals simultaneously the wound and its cure. I feel deeply honored by the note at the beginning of this fine chapter. I have great admiration and respect for the important work that John Jost, his colleagues, and students are doing.

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Kay, A. C., Gaucher, D., Peach, J. M., Laurin, K., Friesen, J., Zanna, M. P., & Spencer, S. J. (2009). Inequality, discrimination, and the power of the status quo: Direct evidence for a motivation to see the way things are as the way they should be. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97, 421–434. Kay, A. C., Jimenez, M. C., & Jost, J. T. (2002). Sour grapes, sweet lemons, and the anticipatory rationalization of the status quo. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1300–1312. Kay, A. C., & Jost, J. T. (2003). Complementary justice: Effects of “poor but happy” and “poor but honest” stereotype exemplars on system justification and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 823–837. Kluegel, J. R., Mason, D. S., & Wegener, B. (1995). Social justice and political change: Public opinion in capitalist and post-communist states. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Kluegel, J. R., & Smith, E. R. (1986). Beliefs about inequality: Americans’ views of what is and what ought to be. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine de Gruyter. Kruglanski, A. W., & Webster, D. M. (1996). Motivated closing of the mind: “seizing” and “freezing.” Psychological Review, 103, 263–283. Lane, R. E. (1962). Political ideology: Why the common man believes what he does. New York: Free Press. Leach, C. W., Snider, N., & Iyer, A. (2002). “Poisoning the consciences of the fortunate”: The experience of relative advantage and support for social equality. In I. Walker & H. J. Smith (Eds.), Relative deprivation: Specification, development, and integration (pp. 136–163). New York: Cambridge. Ledgerwood, A., Mandisodza, A., Jost, J. T., & Pohl, M. J. (2011). Working for the system: Motivated defense of meritocratic beliefs. Social Cognition, forthcoming. Lerner, M. J. (1980). The belief in a just world: A fundamental delusion. New York: Plenum Press. Lewin, K. (1935). Psychosociological problems of a minority group. Character and Personality, 3, 175–187. Lewin, K. (1951). Problems of research in social psychology. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Field theory in social science: Selected theoretical papers by Kurt Lewin (pp. 155–169). New York: Harper. (Original work published 1944). Liviatan, I., & Jost, J. T. (2010). A social-cognitive analysis of system justification goal striving. Unpublished Manuscript, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ. Major, B. (1994). From social inequality to personal entitlement: The role of social comparisons, legitimacy appraisals, and group membership. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 26, pp. 293–355). San Diego, CA: Academic. Major, B., McFarlin, D. B., & Gagnon, D. (1984). Overworked and underpaid: On the nature of gender differences in personal entitlement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1399–1412. Montada, L., & Schneider, A. (1989). Justice and emotional reactions to the disadvantaged. Social Justice Research, 3, 313–344. Moshinsky, A., & Bar-Hillel, M. (2010). Loss aversion and status quo label bias. Social Cognition, 28, 191–204. O’Brien, L. T., & Major, B. (2005). System-justifying beliefs and psychological well-being: The roles of group status and identity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 31, 1718–1729. O’Brien, L. T., & Major, B. (2009). Group status and feelings of personal entitlement: The roles of social comparison and system-justifying beliefs. In J. T. Jost, A. C. Kay & H. Thorisdottir (Eds.) Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification (pp. 427–443). New York: Oxford. Pelham, B. W., & Hetts, J. J. (2001). Underworked and overpaid: Elevated entitlement in men’s self-pay. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 37, 93–103. Reicher, S. (2004). The context of social identity: Domination, resistance, and change. Political Psychology, 25, 921–945. Rubin, M., & Hewstone, M. (2004). Social identity, system justification, and social dominance: Commentary on Reicher, Jost et al., and Sidanius et al. Political Psychology, 25, 823–844.

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Rudman, L. A., & Fairchild, K. (2004). Reactions to counterstereotypic behavior: The role of backlash in cultural stereotype maintenance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87, 157–176. Rudman, L. A., Feinberg, J., & Fairchild, K. (2002). Minority members’ implicit attitudes: Automatic ingroup bias as a function of group status. Social Cognition, 20, 294–320. Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (1999). Feminized management and backlash toward agentic women: The hidden costs to women of a kinder, gentler image of middle managers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 1004–1010. Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2001). Prescriptive gender stereotypes and backlash toward agentic women. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 743–762. Runciman, W. G. (1966). Relative deprivation and social justice: A study of attitudes to social inequality in twentieth-century England. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Sidanius, J., & Pratto, F. (1999). Social dominance: An intergroup theory of social hierarchy and oppression. New York: Cambridge University Press. Skocpol, T. (1994). Social revolutions in the modern world. New York: Cambridge. Stapel, D. A., & Noordewier, M. K. (2011). The mental roots of system justification: System threat, need for structure, and stereotyping. Social Cognition, forthcoming. Thorisdottir, H., & Jost, J. T. (2011). Motivated closed-mindedness mediates the effect of threat on political conservatism. Political Psychology, forthcoming. Tyler, T. R., & Smith, H. J. (1998). Social justice and social movements. In D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology, vols. 1 and 2 (4th ed., pp. 595–629). New York: McGraw-Hill. Uhlmann, E., Dasgupta, N., Elgueta, A., Greenwald, A. G., & Swanson, J. (2002). Subgroup prejudice based on skin color among Hispanics in the United States and Latin America. Social Cognition, 20, 198–226. Van der Toorn, J., Tyler, T. R., & Jost, J. T. (2011). More than fair: Outcome dependence, system justification, and the perceived legitimacy of authority figures. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 127–138. van Zomeren, M., Postmes, T., & Spears, R. (2008). Toward an integrative social identity model of collective action: A quantitative research synthesis of three socio-psychological perspectives. Psychological Bulletin, 134, 504–535. Wakslak, C. J., Jost, J. T., Tyler, T. R., & Chen, E. S. (2007). Moral outrage mediates the dampening effect of system justification on support for redistributive social policies. Psychological Science, 18, 267–274. Walker, I., & Smith, H. J. (Eds.). (2002). Relative deprivation: Specification, development, and integration. New York: Cambridge University Press. Yeung, A. & Kay, A.C. (2007). The “F” word: System justification and negative perceptions of feminists. Unpublished honors thesis, University of Waterloo, Ontario.

Chapter 11

Interdependence and Psychological Orientation Morton Deutsch

In this chapter, I shall examine the relations between types of psychological interdependence and psychological orientations. I shall employ the term psychological orientation to refer to a more or less consistent complex of cognitive, motivational, and moral orientations to a given situation that serve to guide one’s behavior and responses in that situation. In brief, my theoretical analysis posits that distinctive psychological orientations are associated with the distinctive types of interdependence. I also assume that the causal arrow connecting psychological orientations and types of interdependence is bidirectional: A psychological orientation can induce or be induced by a given type of interdependence. Implicit in this view is the further assumption that each person has the capability to utilize the various psychological orientations and their associated cognitive, motivational, and moral orientations. Although individuals may differ in their readiness and ability to use the different orientations as a result of their cultural backgrounds, their personal histories, and their genetic endowments, people participate in diverse social relations in complex societies; and these varied social relations require and, hence, induce different psychological orientations. Thus, my basic assumption is an evolutionary one: Namely, to cope with the psychological requirements of assorted types of social relations, people have developed the capacity to utilize psychological orientations as they are necessary in different situations. This chapter is structured into four sections: (a) a discussion of types of interdependence; (b) a characterization of psychological orientations; (c) a discussion of the relationship between types of interdependence and psychological orientations; and (d) a brief consideration of some relevant research. At the outset, I give notice to the reader that my chapter is not so ambitious as it may appear. I shall not attempt to discuss the full range of types of interdependence or psychological orientations. My aim is the more modest one of illustrating the potential fruitfulness of an idea

Deutsch, M. (1982). Interdependence and psychological orientation. In V. Derlega & J. L. Grzelek (Eds.), Cooperation and helping behavior: Theories and research (15–42). Academic Press. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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that is still in the process of being formed in the hope that doing so will stimulate other investigators to contribute to its development.

Types of Interdependence Several years ago, I collaborated with Wish and Kaplan (Wish, Deutsch, & Kaplan, 1976) in research that sought to identify the fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations.1 Based on this research, as well as earlier research by Triandis (1972) and Marwell and Hage (1970) and later research by Wish and Kaplan (1977), it seems reasonable to assert that the fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations include the following: 1. Cooperation-competition. This dimension is referred to variously in the social psychological literature. I have characterized it as promotive versus contrient interdependence (Deutsch, 1949a) or as a pro-con dimension (Deutsch, 1962). Triandis (1972) referred to it as association-disassociation; Kelley and Thibaut (1978) used the term correspondence-noncorrespondence; and it has been labeled lovehate, evaluative, positive-negative interpersonal disposition, friendly-hostile, etc. by other investigators. In the Wish et al. (1976) study, scales of the following sort were strongly weighted on this dimension: “Always harmonious versus always clashing,” “very cooperative versus very competitive,” “very friendly versus very hostile,” “have compatible versus incompatible goals and desires,” “very productive versus very destructive,” “find it easy versus difficult to resolve conflicts with each other,” “very altruistic versus very selfish,” “very fair versus very unfair.” Such interpersonal relations as “close friends,” “teammates,” and “coworkers” are at the cooperative end of the dimension, whereas “political opponents,” “personal enemies,” “divorced couple,” and “guard and prisoner” are toward the competitive end. The social psychological processes and consequences associated with this dimension have been extensively investigated in my theorizing and research (Deutsch, 1949a, 1949b, 1962, 1973). 2. Power distribution (“equal” versus “unequal”). This dimension has been given various labels: Triandis (1972) characterized it as superordinationsubordination, Kelly (1979) described it in terms of mutuality of interdependence, and others have used such terms as dominance-submission, potency, and autonomycontrol. Such scales as the following are strongly weighted on this dimension: “exactly equal versus extremely unequal power,” “very similar versus very different roles and behaviors,” and “very democratic versus very autocratic attitudes.” “Business partners,” “close friends,” and “business rivals” are at the “equal” end; “master and servant,” “teacher and pupil,” “parent and child,” and “guard and prisoner” are at the “unequal” end. The social psychological processes and consequences associated with this dimension are reviewed in Cartwright and Zander (1968). 3. Task-oriented versus social-emotional. This dimension has been labeled intimacy by Triandis (1972) and Marwell and Hage (1970) and personal by Kelley 1 Although this research studied the perceptions of interpersonal relations, I see no reason to doubt

that the identified dimensions are fundamental aspects of interpersonal relations.

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(1979). Others have identified it as personal-impersonal, subjective versus objective, particularistic versus universalistic, or emotionally involved versus emotionally detached. The two following scales are strongly weighted on this dimension: “pleasure-oriented versus work-oriented,” and “emotional versus intellectual.” Such interpersonal relations as “close friends,” “husband and wife,” “siblings” are at the social-emotional end of the dimension; “interviewer and job applicant,” “opposing negotiators,” “supervisors and employees,” and “business rivals” are at the task-oriented end. Bales’s (1958) distinction between social-emotional and taskoriented leaders of groups is relevant; the former focuses on the solidarity relations among group members, and the latter focuses on the external task and problemsolving activities of the group. Earlier, I made a similar distinction between task functions and group maintenance functions (Deutsch, 1949a, 1949b), which was elaborated in a paper by Benne and Sheats (1948). The sociological distinction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft groups also reflects this basic dimension of social relations. 4. Formal versus informal. Wish and Kaplan (1977) have shown that this dimension can be separated from the preceding one. It appears to be the same as the dimension of regulation identified by Marwell and Hage (1970). In an informal relationship the definition of the activities, times, and locations involved in the relationship are left largely to the participants; in a formal or regulated relationship, social rules and norms largely determine the interactions among those involved. Such scales as “very formal versus very informal” and “very flexible versus very rigid” reflect this dimension. Relations within a bureaucracy tend to be formal, whereas relations within a social club tend to be informal; also, relations between equals are more likely to be informal than relations between unequals. Formal, bureaucratic relationships have been the subject of extensive discussions by such sociological theorists as Weber (1957) and Merton (1957). 5. Intensity or importance. This dimension has to do with the intensity or superficiality of the relationship. Kelley (1979) suggests that it reflects the degree of interdependence (or dependence) in the relationship. Such scales as the following are strongly weighted on it: “very active versus very inactive,” “have intense versus superficial interactions with each other,” “have intense versus superficial feelings toward each other,” and “important versus unimportant to the individuals involved.” “Casual acquaintances,” “second cousins,” and “salesman and customer” are at the superficial end of this dimension; “parent and child,” “husband and wife,” “psychotherapist and patient” are at the intense end. Several other dimensions of interpersonal relations have been identified, including the enduring or temporary nature of the relationship; its voluntary or involuntary character; its public versus private nature; its licit or illicit quality; and the number of people involved in the relationship. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider these other dimensions. Table 11.1 presents the first four dimensions in dichotomous form and provides illustrations of the types of interpersonal relations and types of interpersonal activities that could occur in each of the 16 regions of this four-dimensional space. (I have selected illustrations from the “more intense” rather than “less intense” end of the intensity dimension.) It is, of course, an oversimplification to dichotomize each of

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1 Intimate Lovers Love-making

5 Fraternal Club members Social party

9 Problem-solving Colleagues Staff meeting

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2 Caring Mother-child Nursing

6 Protecting Police officerchild

Competitive Equal

3 Antagonistic Personal enemies Fighting

7 Rivalrous Divorced couple Custody suit

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4 Sadomasochistic Bully-victim Tormenting

8 Dominating Expert-novice Intimidating

10 Educational Professorgraduate student Working together informally on research project under professor’s direction 11 Competitive Contestants in informal game Trying to score points against the other 12 Power struggle Authority-rebel Guerrilla warfare

13 Organized cooperation Task force members Working together with differentiated responsibilities to solve problem 14 Hierarchical organization Supervisoremployee Supervisor assigning employee to do certain task

15 Regulated competition Business rivals Bidding against one another for a contract 16 Regulated power struggle Guard-prisoner Ordering prisoner to keep in step

Note: Each cell characterizes a type of social relation by labeling the relation (first entry), naming people who might be in such a relationship (second entry), and describing an activity that might occur in such a relationship (third entry)

the dimensions, but it is a reasonable place to start. If the reader were to blank out the illustrations in Table 11.1 and attempt to provide other examples, he or she would probably discover that the dimensions are correlated. It is easier to find illustrations for some of the 16 regions than others; some of the regions are undoubtedly more heavily populated than others.

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Thus, social-emotional relations or activities are more likely to be informal than the task-oriented ones, especially if there are relatively more people involved in the task-oriented ones. Also, there appears to be a positive linkage between the informality of the relation or activity and its equality so that it is more difficult to find unequal, informal relations and activities than equal, informal ones. Moreover, there is evidently a positive association between the cooperativeness and informality of a relation or activity. Similarly, there appears to be a positive connection between the equality of an activity or relation and its cooperativeness. Additionally, there is likely to be a positive association between the social-emotional nature of a relation or activity and its cooperativeness. Further, one can expect that social-emotional relations and activities will more frequently be intense than task-oriented ones. And also that interpersonal relations or activities that are extremely cooperative or competitive rather than moderately so will be more intense. The foregoing, hypothesized correlations among the dimensions suggest which regions of the interpersonal space will be heavily populated and which will not.2 (See Wish & Kaplan, 1977, for some support for the hypothesized correlations.) Thus, one would expect more interpersonal relations and activities (particularly, if they are stable and enduring) to be clustered in the cooperative, equal, informal, and social-emotional region (Cell 1 in Table 11.1), which I shall label the intimacy region, than in the competitive, equal, informal, and social-emotional region (Cell 3), which I shall label the antagonistic region. Intense competitive relations or activities are more likely to be stable and enduring if they are regulated or formal rather than unregulated. Thus, one would expect Cell 7 (“rivalry”) to be more populated than Cell 3 (“antagonism”); similarly, for Cell 8 (“dominating”) and for Cells 15 (“regulated competition”) and 16 (“regulated power struggle”) compared to their respective unregulated cells. Intense, cooperative, task-oriented relations or activities are more apt to be equal and informal than otherwise unless there are clear status differences among the people involved (i.e., to be located in Cell 9 rather than in Cell 10, 13, or 14). However, the demands of large-scale cooperative tasks involving more than small numbers of people are apt to require a formal, hierarchical (i.e., unequal) organization for the tasks to be worked on effectively and efficiently. Thus, one could expect many hierarchically organized cooperative relations and activities to be found in Cell 14 (‘hierarchical organization”). Yet the nature of such unequal relations as superordinate-subordinate ones in organizations, especially when they are not strongly legitimated for those in the subordinate position, is such as to produce conflict over the power differences. Hence, this type of relation is rarely free of strong competitive elements. It follows, then, that some superordinate-subordinate relations in hierarchically organized systems will have the character of power struggles, and these would be more appropriately classified as belonging to Cell 16.

2 INDSCAL, the multidimensional scale analysis procedure used in the Wish, Deutsch, and Kaplan

(1976) and the Wish and Kaplan (1977) studies does not force the identified dimensions to be orthogonal.

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Psychological Orientations In writing an earlier draft of this chapter, I entitled this section “Modes of Thought.” This earlier title did not seem to be a sufficiently inclusive label. It appears to me evident that cognitive processes differ in different types of social relations, and I wanted to sketch out the nature of some of these differences. However, I also thought that the psychological differences among the different types of social relations were not confined to the cognitive processes: Different motivational and moral predispositions were also involved. It has been customary to consider these latter predispositions as more enduring characteristics of the individual and to label them “personality traits” or “character orientations.” Since my emphasis is on the situationally induced nature and, hence, temporariness of such predispositions, such labels also did not seem fitting for the material in this section. I have used the term psychological orientation to capture the basic theme of this section: People orient themselves differently to different types of social relations, and different orientations reflect and are reflected in different cognitive processes, motivational tendencies, and moral dispositions.

The Cyclical Relation Between Psychological Orientations and Social Relations Figure 11.1 depicts in schematic form my view of this association between psychological orientations and social relationships, as well as some other factors influencing both of them. It was stimulated by Neisser’s (1976) conception of the perceptual cycle but is a radical modification of it. My emphasis, like Neisser’s, is on the cyclical and active process involved in the connection among the elements. In characterizing this cyclical, active process one can start at any point in the cycle. In practice where one starts will usually be determined by what one manipulates as one’s independent variable. The nonmanipulated variables will be considered to be the dependent ones. Let us suppose, for example, that, as an experimenter, I lead a subject to have the psychological orientation toward another typical of a mutually promotive, interdependent relationship. This, in turn, will lead the subject to have some characteristic interactions with the other and these, in turn, will have some effects upon both the subject and the other that will provide evidence as to the type of relationship that exists between them. Finally, this will validate as appropriate or invalidate as inappropriate the subject’s psychological orientation and require its modification. Here the cycle is A → B → C → A. Or, I might begin at a different point, C, inducing the subject to believe that he was in a mutually promotive, interdependent relation. This would, in turn, lead the subject to have a psychological orientation toward the relationship that has specifiable characteristics and this, in turn, would lead to certain interactions with the other, etc. Here the cycle is C → A →B → C. Or, I might commence by leading the subject to interact with the other in specified ways that, in turn, would produce certain consequences that, in turn, would produce evidence as

Interdependence and Psychological Orientation

, TS

TUATIONS, AND TH

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H CH HI W

C1

IONS LAT RE EIR TH

PRESENT SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP

MODIFIES

DESIRED SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP

PSYCHOLOGICAL ORIENTATION TO PRESENT RELATIONSHIP

TESTS

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EXPLORATION OF PRESENT RELATIONSHIP THROUGH NORMATIVE ACTIONS AND DEFINITIONS REACTIONS DIRECTS OF SELF AND OF PSYCHOLOGICAL OTHERS A

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Fig. 11.1 The circular relation between an individual’s psychological orientation and the type of social relationship in which he or she is involved

to what kind of relationship the subject was in, etc. Here the starting point is B and the cycle goes on to C, etc. Several other features of Fig. 11.1 merit comment. I assume that the two parts of each triangle can affect one another: 1. One’s psychological orientation to one’s present social relationship can be affected by and can also affect one’s desires with regard to that relationship. Thus, if one has a desire for a cooperative relationship but a contrient orientation to the other, one may change either one’s desire or one’s orientation, depending on which is less strongly rooted. 2. One’s present social relations with another can influence or be influenced by the potential one sees for the development of the relationship. If I experience the present relationship as a destructive one, I might not see it as having a future; on the other hand, if I see the potential of developing a warm, loving relationship, I might be more positive toward an initially difficult relationship than I might otherwise be.

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3. The nature of one’s actions and reactions in a relationship can affect as well as be affected by the normative definitions that exist regarding interactions in a given social relationship. Although early in a relationship, culturally determined, normative definitions often govern the meanings of social interactions, relations tend to build up their own idiosyncratic normative definitions as a result of repeated interactions that may be peculiar to the particular relationship. There is, of course, a tendency for the two parts of each triangle to be consistent with one another. When they are not, one can expect a more complex psychological structure than the one depicted in Fig. 11.1. For example, if the present and future characteristics of the social relationship are perceived to be inconsistent with one another, the time perspective dimension of the relationship will be very prominent. If there is an inconsistency between the desired social relationship and the present psychological orientation, the reality dimension will be very prominent. It is beyond the scope of the present chapter to consider these important psychological aspects of social relations; Lewin (1951) makes suggestive remarks about these dimensions of the life space in his writings. Surrounding the triangles of Fig. 11.1 is the “objective” world of the participants; this includes the characteristics of the individual participants, their immediate situations, and the environment within which their relationship is embedded. I have characterized this objective world as sending causal arrows to all of the elements involved in the psychological orientation-social relations cycle and also as receiving causal arrows from these elements. The nature of the participants and their immediate situations as well as their environment affect their social relations, their psychological orientation, and their interactions; and these phenomena, in turn, affect the participants and the realities confronting them. In this larger cycle, it is the variables that one considers independent that one manipulates.

The Nature of Psychological Orientations Cognitive Orientations In recent years, scholars in a number of different disciplines—cognitive psychology, social psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology, and artificial intelligence— have utilized such terms as schema, script, and frame to refer to the structures of expectations that help orient the individual cognitively to the situation confronting him. I shall employ the term cognitive orientation as being essentially the same as these terms. In the view being presented here, the person’s cognitive orientation to his situation is only one aspect of his psychological orientation to a social relationship. Other aspects include his motivational orientation and his moral orientation. The term schema goes back to Bartlett (1932) who, much influenced by the work of the neurologist Sir Henry Head (1920), emphasized the constructive and organized features of memory as opposed to the notion of memory as passive storage.

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The term script derives from the work of Abelson (1975, 1976) and Schanck and Abelson (1977) who also stress that people have organized knowledge of a stereotypic form about most recurrent situations they encounter. Abelson (1975) defines a script as a “coherent sequence of events expected by the individual, involving him either as a participant or as an observer [p. 33].” He goes on to postulate that “cognitively mediated social behavior depends on the joint occurrence of two processes: (a) the selection of a particular script to represent the given social situation and (b) the taking of a participant role within that script [pp. 42–43].” The term frame was introduced by Bateson (1955) to explain how individuals exchange signals that allow them to agree on the level of abstraction at which any message is intended— for example, whether the message is intended as serious or playful. Goffman (1974) has generalized Bateson’s discussion of frames in an extended analysis of how individuals, as they attend to any current situation, face the question, “What is it that’s going on here?” Underlying the concepts of schema, script, and frame is the shared view that people approach their social world actively, with structured expectations about themselves and their social environments that reflect their organized beliefs about different social situations and different people. Our structured expectations make it possible for us to interpret and respond quickly to what is going on in specific situations. If our expectations lead us to inappropriate interpretations and responses, then they are likely to be revised on the basis of our experiences in the situation. Or if the circumstance confronting us is sufficiently malleable, our interpretations and responses to it may help to shape its form. Schemas, scripts, or frames may be very concrete and specific—for example, how to work together with a particular person on a given task—or they may be rather abstract and general—for example, what is involved in a competitive as compared to a cooperative relation. In any society that provides a variety of situations in which different areas in the multidimensional space of social relations (the space being composed from the dimensions that were described in the first major section of this chapter) are well-represented, it is likely that rather abstract schemas or scripts will develop to characterize the types of relations depicted in Table 11.1. Such scripts, or cognitive orientations, are a central component of what I am here terming psychological orientations. It is important for the participants in a particular social relationship to know “what’s going on here”—to know the actors, the roles they are to perform, the relations among the different roles, the props and settings, the scenes, and the themes of the social interaction. However, everyday social relations are rarely as completely specified by well-articulated scripts as is social interaction in a play in the traditional theatre; ordinary social interactions have more the qualities of improvisational theatre in which only the nature of the characters involved in the situation is wellspecified and the characters are largely free to develop the details of the skeletonized script as they interact with one another. The improvisational nature of most social relations—the fact that given types of social relations occur in widely different contexts and with many different kinds of actors—makes it likely that relatively abstract or generalized cognitive orientations,

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schemas, or scripts will develop for the different types of social relations. I assume that people are implicit social psychological theorists and, as a result of their experience, have developed cognitive schemas of the different types of social relations that, though usually not articulated, are similar to those articulated by theorists in social psychology and the other social sciences. Undoubtedly, at this early stage of the development of social science theory, the unarticulated conceptions of the average person are apt to be more sophisticated than the articulated ones of the social scientists.

Motivational Orientations Just as different cognitive orientations are associated with the different types of social relations, so also are different motivational orientations. A motivational orientation toward a given social relationship orients one to the possibilities of gratification or frustration of certain types of needs in the given relationship. To the cognitive characterization of the relationship, the motivational orientation adds the personal, subjective features arising from one’s situationally relevant motives or need-dispositions. The motivational orientation gives rise to the cathexis of certain regions of the cognitive landscape, making them positively or negatively valent, and highlights the pathways to and from valent regions. It gives the cognitive map a dynamic character. It predisposes one to certain kinds of fantasies (or nightmares) and to certain kinds of emotions. It orients one to such questions as “What is to be valued in this relationship?” and “What do I want here and how do I get it?” It is evident that different types of social relations offer different possibilities of need gratification. It would be unreasonable, for example, to expect one’s need for affection to be gratified in a business transaction and inappropriate to expect one’s financial needs to be fulfilled in an intimate relationship. In the third section of the chapter I shall attempt to characterize briefly the motivational orientations associated with the polar ends of the different dimensions of interpersonal relations.

Moral Orientations A moral orientation toward a given social relationship orients one to the mutual obligations, rights, and entitlements of the people involved in the given relationship. It adds an “ought to,” “should,” or obligatory quality to a psychological orientation. The moral orientation implies that one experiences one’s relationship not only from a personal perspective but also from a social perspective that includes the perspective of the others in the relationship. A moral orientation makes the experience of injustice more than a personal experience. Not only is one personally affected; so are the other participants in the relationship, because its value underpinnings are being undermined. The various participants in a relationship have the mutual obligation to respect and protect the framework of social norms that define what is to be

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considered as fair or unfair in the interactions and outcomes of the participants. One can expect that the moral orientation, and hence what is considered fair, will differ in the different types of social relations.

The Relationship Between Types of Interdependence and Psychological Orientations In this section, I shall characterize the psychological orientations that are associated with the dimensions of cooperation-competition, power, task-oriented versus socialemotional, and formal versus informal. For each of the four dimensions depicted in Table 11.1, I shall describe the cognitive, motivational, and moral orientations that typify the dimension.

Cooperation-Competition Cognitive Orientation The cooperative-competitive dimension seems so fundamental to social life that one would assume a well-developed innate predisposition to develop abstract cognitive orientations to help an individual define quickly whether “what’s going on here?” is “good” for him or “bad” for him. With additional experience and further psychological differentiation and integration, the basic cognitive schema of cooperation-competition should emerge: We are “for” one another or “against” one another; we are linked together so that we both gain or lose together or we are linked together so that if one gains, the other loses. This basic schema has many implications (see Deutsch, 1949a, 1949b, 1962, 1973, 1979 for an elaboration of these implications). It leads an individual holding it to expect that in a cooperative relation, the other will be pleased by the individual’s effective actions and ready to help him or her achieve success; the individual will expect the opposite to be true in a competitive relationship. If one believes one is in a cooperative relationship and the other is displeased by one’s effective actions, one will wonder, “What is going on here?” “Am I in the kind of relation that I think I am in?” “What can I do to find out what is going on here?” Motivational Orientation In a cooperative relation, one is predisposed to cathect the other positively; to have a trusting and benevolent attitude toward the other; to be psychologically open to the other; to be giving as well as receptive to the other; to have a sense of responsibility toward the other and toward the mutual process of cooperation; to see the other as similar to oneself; etc. One is also predisposed to expect the other to have a similar orientation toward oneself. Murray’s (1938, pp. 175–177) description of the need for affiliation captures much of the essence of this motivational orientation. It is clear

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that the specific quality of this orientation will be very much influenced by what type of cooperative relation is involved: social-emotional or task-oriented, equal or unequal, formal or informal, intense or superficial. In a competitive relation, one is predisposed to cathect the other negatively; to have a suspicious and hostile, exploitative attitude toward the other; to be psychologically closed to the other; to be aggressive and defensive toward the other; to see advantage and superiority for the self and disadvantage and inferiority for the other; to see the other as opposed to oneself and basically different; etc. One is also predisposed to expect the other to have the same orientation. Murray’s (1938) description of the need for aggression (pp. 159–161) and need for defendance (pp. 194–195) as well as the associated needs for infavoidance (pp. 192–193) and counteraction (pp. 195–197) seem to characterize many of the basic features of this motivational orientation. The specific quality of this motivational orientation will be determined by the type of competitive situation: task-oriented or social-emotional, equal or unequal, formal or informal, intense or superficial. In addition, it will be colored by one’s conception of one’s chances of winning or losing. Moral Orientation Although the specific character of the moral orientations associated with cooperation and competition will also depend on other features of the social relationship, it seems evident that cooperation and competition elicit different types of moral orientations. The moral orientation linked with cooperation is a tendency toward egalitarianism. The tendency underlies a general conception of justice that Rawls (1972) has expressed as follows: “All social values—liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect—are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage [p. 62].” The moral orientation connected with cooperation fosters mutual respect and selfrespect and favors equality as a guiding value to be breached only when inequality brings greater benefits and advantages to those less fortunate than they would otherwise have been if all were treated equally. Given this moral orientation, as Rawls (1972) points out, “Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all [p. 62].” In contrast, the moral orientation linked with competition sanctions inequality and legitimates a win-lose struggle to determine who will have superior and who will have inferior outcomes in a competitive relationship. Depending on other features of the relationship, the struggle may be regulated so that the competition takes place under fair rules (as in a duel of honor) and one’s moral orientation will include an obligation to obey the rules, or the struggle may be a “no-holds-barred” one in which any means to defeat the other can be employed. An active state of competition implies that the competitors do not mutually perceive and accept a superior-inferior relationship between them: If they do, and they continue to wage competition, then they are violating the moral imperatives of competitive justice. Thus, it is part of the moral orientation of competition for a victor to accept the defeat of someone who acknowledges being vanquished without continuing to beat the defeated one.

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Power (“Equality” Versus “Inequality”) Cognitive Orientation The basic schema of “relationship power” (Deutsch, 1973) has to do with the relative power of the participants in a relationship to benefit or harm or persuade one another and, hence, their relative power to influence one another. In a relationship of unequal power, it is expected that the more powerful member will be advantaged and the less powerful one will be disadvantaged whenever their interests are opposed: Hence, it is considered better to be in the more- rather than the less-powerful position in a competitive relationship. The competitive branch of the unequal power schema highlights the roles of “victor” and “vanquished”; the equal power schema orients more to continuing struggle. In both competitive branches, the use of tactics of coercion, intimidation, and power bluffs are made salient. Even in a situation where the more- and less-powerful members have congruent interests, the less-powerful member is expected to be more dependent on the other and, hence, more likely to engage in ingratiating behavior. The cooperative branch of the unequal power schema emphasizes the orientation toward responsibility in the high power position and of respectful compliance from the low power position; the equal power schema orients more toward mutual responsibility and respect. Both cooperative branches make salient the use of the more positive forms of power: persuasion rather than coercion, benefits rather than harms, legitimate rather than illegitimate power, etc.

Motivational Orientation In an equality relation, one is predisposed to consider that the other is entitled to the same esteem and respect as oneself. The quality of power is likely to signify that the different participants in a relationship have the same value. Respect and esteem are more valuable if they are received from those whom one respects; equal status relations represent the optimum distribution for the mutual support of self-esteem. The need-dispositions relate to self-esteem and self-respect seem to underlie this motivational orientation. The need for self-esteem involves the need to have a sense of the worthiness of one’s goals and a sense of confidence in one’s ability to fulfill one’s intentions; the need for self-respect involves the need to have a sense of one’s moral worth, of one’s equal right to justice and fair treatment. It undermines one’s sense of belonging to a moral community to be treated more fairly or less fairly than others and this, in turn, weakens the foundations of self-respect. Hence, one’s selfrespect is more firmly grounded in relationships where one can feel the others are also entitled to respect. Similarly, the confidence in oneself that is connected with a secure self-esteem is fostered by association and comparison with people who are similar in status rather than with those who are higher or lower. In an unequal relationship, one is predisposed either to take a more dominant or a more subordinate role or to resist the inequality. Murray (1938) has characterized the different aspects of the need for dominance. It is manifest in the desire to

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control, influence, direct, command, induce, dictate, supervise, instruct, or lead. In a competitive situation, the need for dominance will often be fused with the need for aggression and will lead to attempts to coerce and force the other to comply with one’s desires. In a cooperative situation, it will often be fused with the need for nurturance and will lead to a protective, guiding, and caring orientation toward the other. Different needs are associated with the submissive role, depending on whether it occurs in a cooperative or competitive context. In a cooperative context, Murray’s (1938, pp. 154–156) description of the need for deference seems appropriate. It involves a readiness to follow, to comply, to emulate, to conform, to obey, to defer, to admire, to revere, to be suggestible, to heed advice, and otherwise to accept the superior authority of the other. In a competitive relationship, the needdisposition associated with the acceptance of the inferior role is well characterized in Murray’s (1938, pp. 161–164) description of the need for abasement. This disposition is reflected in the tendency to submit passively, to accept blame, to surrender, to seek punishment or pain, to be servile, to be resigned, to acquiesce, to be timorous, to give in, and to allow oneself to be bullied. It is evident that the subordinate role in an unequal relationship may be difficult to accept and may be resisted. The resistance to an unequal relationship will be evidenced in aspects of what Murray has termed the need for autonomy (pp.156–159) and the need for rejection (pp. 177– 180). The need for autonomy is characterized by the tendency to resist coercion and restraint, to be defiant and rebellious in relation to arbitrary authority, to be independent of social ties, and to be a nonconformist. The need for rejection is reflected in the tendency to separate oneself from a negatively cathected other; to reject a disliked superior other; to out-snub a snob; to exclude, abandon, expel or remain indifferent to an inferior other. Moral Orientation As the preceding discussion of motivational orientations would suggest, there are a number of different moral orientations connected with equality and inequality: Other features of the relationship, in addition to the distribution of power within it, will determine the nature of the moral orientation that will be elicited. Thus, in a cooperative, equal relationship one would expect the kind of egalitarian relationship described in the section on the moral orientation associated with cooperation-competition. In a cooperative, unequal relationship, the moral orientation obligates the more powerful person to employ his power in such a way as to benefit the less powerful one, not merely himself. In such a relationship, the less powerful one has the obligation to show appreciation, to defer to, and honor the more powerful person. These obligations may be rather specific and limited if the relationship is task-oriented or they may be diffuse and general if the relationship is a social-emotional one. In an equal, competitive relationship, one’s moral orientation is toward the value of initial equality among the competitors and the subsequent striving to achieve superiority over the others. This orientation favors “equal opportunity” but not “equal outcomes”: The competitors start the contest with equal chances to win,

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but some win and some lose. In an unequal, competitive relationship the moral orientations of the strong and the weak support an exploitative relationship. The strong are likely to adopt the view that the rich and powerful are biologically and, hence, morally superior; they have achieved their superior positions as a result of natural selection; it would be against nature to interfere with the inequality and suffering of the poor and weak; and it is the manifest destiny of superior people to lead inferior peoples. The beatitude of those in powerful positions who exploit those in weaker positions appears to be, “Blessed are the strong, for they shall prey upon the weak” (Banton, 1967, p. 48). In an unequal, competitive relationship, the weak are apt to identify with the aggressor (A. Freud, 1937) and adopt the moral orientation of the more powerful and to feel that their inferior outcomes are deserved. Or, they may feel victimized. If so, they may either develop a revolutionary moral orientation directed toward changing the nature of the existing relationship or they may develop the moral orientation of being a victim. The latter orientation seeks to obtain secondary gratification from being morally superior to the victimizer: “It’s better to be sinned against than to sin”; “the meek shall inherit the earth.”

Task-Oriented Versus Social-Emotional Cognitive Orientation The basic schema here has to do with the focus of involvement. In a task-oriented relationship, one expects the attention and the activities of the participants to be directed toward something external to their relationship, whereas in a socialemotional relationship one expects much of the involvement to be centered on the relationship and the specific persons in the relationship. This difference in focus leads one to expect a relationship that is primarily task-oriented to be impersonal in the sense that the actual accomplishment of the task is more important than the identity of the persons involved in accomplishing it and the nature of their personal relationships. In a task-oriented relationship, people who can perform equally well on the task are substitutable for one another. The personal identity and the unique individuality of the performer have little significance in such a relationship. In contrast, in a social-emotional relationship, the personal qualities and identity of the individuals involved are of paramount importance. People are not readily substitutable for one another. Using Parsonian terminology, in a task-oriented relation people are oriented to one another as complexes of performances—that is, in terms of what each does; in a social-emotional relationship people are oriented to each other as complexes of qualities—that is, in terms of what each is. Also, in a task-oriented relationship, one’s orientation toward the other is universalistic— that is, one applies general standards that are independent of one’s particular relationship with the other; in a social-emotional relationship, one’s orientation is particularistic—that is, one’s responses to the other are determined by the particular relatedness that exists between oneself and the other.

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In a task-oriented relationship one is oriented to making decisions about which means are most efficient in achieving given ends.3 This orientation requires an abstract, analytic, quantifying, calculating, comparative mode of thought in which one is able to adopt an effectively neutral, external attitude toward different means in order to be able to make a precise appraisal of their comparative merit in achieving one’s ends. One orients to other people as instrumental means and evaluates them in comparison or competition with other means. In contrast, in a social-emotional relationship one is oriented to the attitudes, feelings, and psychological states of the other as ends. This orientation requires a more holistic, concrete, intuitive, qualitative, appreciative-aesthetic mode of thought in which one’s own affective reactions help one to apprehend the other from the “inside.” Other people are oriented to as unique persons rather than as instruments in which aspects of the person are useful for particular purposes. Motivational Orientation A task-oriented relationship tends to evoke achievement-oriented motivations. Achievement motivation has been discussed extensively by Murray (1938), McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell (1953), Atkinson and Feather (1966), and Weiner (1974). Here I wish merely to indicate that it consists not only of the egoistic motivations to achieve success and to avoid failure; motivations related to using one’s capabilities in worthwhile activities may also be involved. Additionally, since achievement motivation is often instrumentally oriented to serve an adaptive function in relation to the external environment characterized by a scarcity rather than abundance of resources, it usually contains an element of motivation that is oriented toward rational, efficient accomplishment of the task. Further, since task-oriented relationships are primarily instrumental rather than consummatory in character, they require a motivational orientation that accepts delay-in-gratification and that obtains satisfaction from disciplined activity oriented toward future gratification. A number of different motivational orientations are likely to be elicited in socialemotional relationships: affiliation, affection, esteem, play, sentience, eroticism, and nurturance-succorance. The primary feature of these different need-dispositions as they are manifested in social-emotional relationships is that they are focused on the nature of the person-to-person (or person-to-group) relationship: They are oriented toward giving and receiving cathexes; toward the attitudes and emotions of the people involved in the relationship; toward the pleasures and frustrations arising from the interaction with the particular others in the given relationship. Although past experiences and future expectations may affect how one acts toward others and how one interprets the actions of others in a social-emotional relationship, such a 3 I caution the reader not to conclude from this sentence or from anything else in this chapter that relationships that are exclusively task-oriented will be more productive than those that have a mixture of task-orientedness and social-emotional orientedness. Effective group functioning on tasks, for example, requires attention to “group maintenance” as well as to “task functions” (Deutsch, 1949b).

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relationship—if it is a genuine one—is not instrumental to other, future goals; it is an end in itself. In this sense, the need-dispositions in a social-emotional relationship are oriented toward current rather than delayed gratification.

Moral Orientation The moral orientation in a task-oriented relationship is that of utilitarianism. Its root value is maximization: People should try to get the most out of situations. Good is viewed as essentially quantitative, as something that can be increased or decreased without limit (Diesing, 1962, p. 35). A second element in this moral orientation is the means-end schema, in which efficient allocation of means to achieve alternative ends becomes a salient value. A third element is impartiality in the comparison of means, so that means can be compared on the basis of their merit in achieving given ends rather than on the basis of considerations irrelevant to the means-end relationship. In Parsonian terms, the moral-orientation in task-oriented relations are characterized by the values of universalism, affective neutrality, and achievement. In contrast, the moral orientation of social-emotional relations are characterized by the values of particularism, affectivity, and ascription (Diesing, 1962, p. 90). Obligations to other people in a social-emotional relationship are based on their particular relationship to oneself rather than on general principles: They are strongest when relations are close and weakest when relations are distant. In a task-oriented relation, one strives to detach oneself from the objects of one’s actions and to treat them all as equal, separate interchangeable entities; in a social-emotional relationship one is the focal point of myriad relationships that one strives to maintain and extend, since action task place only within relationships (Diesing, 1962, p. 91). Ascription is the opposite of the achievement value: It means that one’s actions and obligations toward people spring solely from their relationship to oneself rather than as a response to something they have done.

Formal Versus Informal Cognitive Orientation The basic element in the schema related to this dimension has to do with whether one expects the people involved in the social situation to let their activities, forms of relationship, demeanor, and the like be determined and regulated largely by social rules and conventions or whether one expects such people to have the freedom to make and break their own rules as suit their individual and collective inclinations. In a formal relationship, one expects that the latitude for deviation from conventional forms of behavior is small and that when one violates the rules, others will react negatively and one will be embarrassed (if the violation is unwitting). Since the rules are usually well-known and well-articulated in a formal relationship, it is apt to be characterized by more predictability and less surprise than an informal one. Hostile

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rather than friendly relations, unequal rather than equal ones, and impersonal rather than formal ones are more likely to be regulated than informal. Motivational Orientation Formal social relations appear to be related to a cluster of psychological tendencies. Murray (1938, pp. 200–204) has described various elements of this cluster: the need for order, subsuming conjunctivity, sameness, deliberateness, and placidity. Although Murray’s emphasis is on the enduring character of these psychological predispositions, it seems likely that the psychological tendencies underlying the bureaucratic personality (Merton, 1957) can be elicited by bureaucratic structures. These tendencies have been well described by Merton in his classic paper on bureaucratic structure and personality and amply characterized in the literature on the obsessive-compulsive personality. The emphasis here is on how “formal” situations can temporarily induce in otherwise nonbureaucratic and nonobsessive personalities psychological predispositions to value order, regulation, predictability, sameness, lack of surprise, and the like. Informal relations tend to be more open, more particularistic, more frank, more flexible, more emotional, and more personal than formal ones. They have a more relaxed, improvisational character in which quickly formed, intuitive and impressionistic reactions to the specific other in the particular situation largely determine one’s behavior. In an informal relation, one’s motivational orientation is more directed toward persons, whereas in a formal relation it is more directed toward rules and authority. Emotion and conflict is more apt to be openly expressed in informal relations and avoided in formal ones. The more enduring psychological predispositions that are characteristic of the so-called hysterical personality and the field dependent person, resemble the situationally induced motivational orientations to be found in informal relations. Moral Orientation In many respects, the moral orientations to task-oriented and formal relations are similar; this is also the case for social-emotional and informal relations. Formal relations go beyond the values of universalism and affective neutrality or impartiality to include a moral orientation to the rules and conventions that guide social relations. One has an obligation to respect them and to conform to them. One’s obligation is to the form of the relationship rather than to its spirit. In contrast, in an informal relationship one is morally oriented to the spirit rather than the form of the relationship. It is the relationship to which one is obligated rather than to the rules that are supposed to regulate it. In the preceding pages, for brevity’s sake, I have discussed the psychological orientations characterizing each of the four dimensions of interpersonal relations as though the dimensions existed in isolation from one another. Of course, in doing so, I have not adequately characterized the psychological orientations characterizing the different types of interpersonal relations: Each type reflects a combination

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of different dimensions. The psychological orientation associated, for example, with an intimate relation fuses the orientation connected with the particular positions on the cooperative, social-emotional, equal, informal, and intense dimensions. Here, the psychological orientations arising from the different dimensions of the relationship are all concordant with one another. A threat to an intimate relationship might arise from a discordance on any of the dimensions: for example, from a competitive orientation rather than a cooperative one (“I am more giving than you are”); from a task-oriented rather than a social-emotional one (“You don’t accomplish enough”); from a dependent rather than an equal one (“I need you to protect me and to take care of me”); or from a formal rather than informal one (“I get upset in a relationship unless I always know what is expected, unless it has no surprises, unless it is always orderly and predictable”). From our discussion of the correlations among the different dimensions in the first section of this chapter, it is evident that there is more or less discordance among the psychological orientations related to the different dimensions in the different types of social relations. Thus, the psychological orientation associated with cooperation is more concordant with the psychological orientations associated with equality, informality, and social-emotional activities than with the orientations associated with inequality, formality, and task-oriented activities. However, many cooperative relations are task-oriented and/or unequal and/or formal. Where there is discordance among the different dimensions characterizing a relationship, it seems likely that the relative weights or importance of the different dimensions in the given type of relationship will determine the relative weights of their associated psychological orientations. That is, if the task-oriented character of the relationship has stronger weight than the cooperative aspects, it will have more influence in determining the governing psychological orientation. It also seems likely that the more extreme is the location on a given dimension, the more apt is that dimension to have the key role in determining the nature of the psychological orientation: In a situation that is extremely formal and only slightly cooperative, the psychological orientation will be determined more by the situation’s formality than by its cooperativeness.

Some Relevant Research In the opening paragraph of this chapter, I stated that the causal arrow connecting psychological orientations and types of interdependence is bidirectional: A psychological orientation can induce or be induced by a given type of interdependence. Here, I would go further and indicate that the cognitive, motivational, and moral components of a psychological orientation can each induce one another—hence, they are likely to be found together—and each of the components can induce or be induced by a given type of interdependence. The foregoing assumptions proliferate into a great number of testable, specific hypotheses that I do not have the space to elaborate in this chapter. To illustrate, however, these hypotheses would predict a

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two-way causal arrow between specific modes of thought and specific types of social relations. Thus, a “bureaucratic” social situation will tend to induce “obsessivecompulsive” modes of thought and obsessive-compulsive modes of thought will tend to “bureaucratize” a social relationship. They would also predict that a competitive social relationship will tend to increase the psychological weight or importance of the differences in values between oneself and one’s competitors, whereas a cooperative relationship will tend to increase the psychological importance of the similarities in values between oneself and one’s fellow cooperators. We would also hypothesize that a tendency to accentuate the differences in values between oneself and others is apt to induce a competitive relationship, whereas a tendency to accentuate the similarities is likely to induce a cooperative relationship. Further, it can be predicted that different principles of distributive justice will be associated with different types of social relations: A fraternal relationship will be connected with the principle of equality; a caring relationship with the principle of need; a hierarchical organization with the principle of equity; a power struggle with the principle of “winner-take-all.” Each of these different principles can induce different modes of thought and different types of social relations when experimentally introduced into an otherwise unstructured social situation. For all of the various hypotheses that entail two-way causal arrows, from an experimental point of view, the independent variables are the ones that are manipulated by the experimenter and the dependent variables are the ones that are affected by the manipulated variables. Some of the hypotheses suggested by the theoretical ideas presented in this chapter have been tested in my laboratory (Deutsch, 1973) and by many other researchers working in a variety of areas in social psychology. However, many of these ideas have not yet been systematically investigated. Here, I wish to describe briefly two dissertation studies. One has recently been published (Judd, 1978); data for the other are now being analyzed. Both were conducted in our laboratory and reflect our interests in the relation between types of interdependence and modes of thought. In the first of these studies, Judd (1978) argues that competitive processes in attitude conflicts are characterized by a tendency to accentuate the evaluative differences between one’s own position and the position of the person one is arguing with. One of the ways in which this might be done is by emphasizing those conceptual dimensions along which there are larger differences. Hence, Judd hypothesized that in a competitive attitude conflict, the conflicting parties will come to see their positions as being relatively dissimilar and this will be accomplished by heightening the evaluative centrality of those conceptual dimensions that best distinguish between the positions. For cooperative processes, he argued that parties have the mutual goal of learning more about the issue under dispute. An emphasis on conceptual dimensions along which positions differ significantly may well lead to a more competitive conflict; therefore, Judd hypothesized that a cooperative orientation will motivate individuals to deemphasize those dimensions that best discriminate between the positions and to emphasize dimensions along which there is less of a difference. Thus, a cooperative orientation between conflicting parties will lead to the

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heightened perception of position similarity as a result of lowered evaluative centrality of the most discriminating dimensions and heightened evaluative centrality of less discriminating dimensions. Judd came to the interesting conclusion that the perceptions of the similaritydissimilarity of positions induced by one’s orientation (competitive or cooperative) to a conflict will be mediated by conceptual changes in the way we look at the issue under dispute. We will come to place more evaluative emphasis on some dimensions and less on others, and these changes may be relatively long-lasting. Judd’s research was designed to test this hypothesis. Pairs of subjects were assigned positions on how National Health Insurance should be organized, an issue about which they did not have strong opinions. These positions differed along three attribute dimensions, positions of pairs being highly distant on one dimension, less distant on a second, and identical on the third. Distance positions along dimensions and content of dimensions were varied independently so that Judd’s hypothesis could be tested independently of dimension content. Subjects were asked to either discuss or debate the issue under either a cooperative or competitive orientation. Following this, judgments of similarity of positions were gathered and dimensional evaluative centrality was measured in order to test the hypothesis under investigation. The results of the experiment strongly confirmed its underlying hypothesis: Competition led to decreased perceived similarity between the positions, and the dimension on which positions differed most was most evaluatively central; cooperation had opposite effects. In other words, the competitive orientation led the competitors to develop conceptual structures, related to the issue under dispute, that accentuated the differences between them and made these differences more attitudinally significant to them; in contrast, the cooperative orientation led the disputants to develop conceptual structures that emphasized the similarities in their positions and made the similarities more emotionally important to them. An experiment by William A. Wenck, now in progress in our laboratory, is also concerned with the relation between types of interdependence and modes of thought. In his study, Wenck is investigating the effects on modes of thought and types of social relations of three different distributive systems: (a) winner-take-all, where whoever contributes the most to the group perceives the total outcome or reward received by the group; (b) equity, where the group’s outcome is distributed to the individuals in proportion to their respective contributions to the group; and (c) equality, where the group’s outcome is shared equally by all its members. Wenck’s investigation of the correlates of these three distributive systems derives from my (Deutsch, 1976) characterization of them: 1. The winner-take-all system is associated with a “macho,” power-oriented mentality; it also is associated with a high risk-taking, gambling orientation. This mode of thought is much more prevalent in men than in women. It is common in social conditions of disorder, intense competition, widespread illegality, violence, or poverty. It is common in frontier societies, in societies lacking a middle

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class, in illegal organizations, in adolescent male gangs, in warring groups, etc. It can be elicited by challenge to basic values, by unregulated competition, by an atmosphere of violence and illegality, by anything that stimulates greed or desperation. 2. The equity system is associated with an economic mode of thought that is characterized by quantification, measurement, calculation, comparison, evaluation, impersonality, and conversion of unique values to a common currency. It is a cool, detached, future-oriented, analytic, tough-minded mode of thought that appeals to universalistic values, logical reasoning, and objective reality rather than particularistic values, intuition, emotion, and subjective considerations. It is more prevalent in men than women. It is common in societies characterized by a stable hierarchical order, regulated competition, a developed economy, technological advancement, and a large middle class who are neither poor nor rich. It is elicited by conditions that stress productivity, efficiency, objectivity, impersonality, detachment, individualism, and instrumentalism. 3. The equality system is associated with a particularistic, social-emotional orientation that is characterized by reliance on intuition, empathy, and personal feeling as a guide to reality. It is a holistic, involved, related, present-oriented “soft” mode of thought in which the reality of others is apprehended from the inside rather than from the outside. Unlike the equity orientation, it is more prevalent in women than men. It is common in fraternal societies and in small cohesive groups that stress friendship, intimacy, loyalty, personal attachments, mutual respect, individual dignity, and cooperation. It is elicited by conditions that emphasize the bonds with others and the symmetrical-reciprocal character of these bonds. Wenck’s study employs a very involving, three-person task in which the group’s outcome is determined by the activities of all three persons. The group outcome is distributed to the individuals according to one of the three distributive principles described earlier. The task permits a variety of individual behaviors: The participants can work independently, they can help one another, they can harm one another. After working on the task for 30 min, the subjects are interrupted, and are administered a number of different instruments to obtain the dependent measures. Several questionnaires get at subjects’ strategy in the task, their self-concepts as they worked on the task, their orientation toward other subjects, and their perception of others’ orientation toward them as they all worked on the task. Adjective checklists elicit the motives and emotions that were activated during work on the task. In addition, projective techniques are employed to obtain the subjects’ views of the group and of themselves as they worked in the group. At this writing, the data have been collected and not yet completely analyzed. However, preliminary analyses show the following significant results: The “equality” groups were more productive than the “equity groups” who were in turn more productive than the “winner-take-all” groups; the “autobiographies” composed by the subjects for the roles they developed in the three experimental

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conditions differed from one another in expected ways; “winner-take-all” subjects characterized their thoughts and feelings as being more “aggressive,” “risk-taking,” “ruthless,” “selfish,” “rougher,” “unsharing,” and “changeable than did the subjects in the other two conditions; the subjects in the “equality” condition described themselves as more “nurturant,” “affiliative,” “cooperative,” and “altruistic” than did those in the other two conditions; self-characterization of the subjects in the “equity” condition fell in between the “winner-take-all” and “equality” conditions. It is apparent that the results which have been analyzed so far are in accord with the basic ideas underlying the experiment.

Concluding Comments In this chapter, I have advanced several theses. First, different types of social relations can be characterized in terms of their positions on a number of basic dimensions of interpersonal relations. Second, each of the different types of social relations have associated with them distinctive psychological orientations. A psychological orientation is a complex consisting of interrelated cognitive, motivational, and moral orientations. Third, the causal arrow connecting psychological orientations and types of social relations is bidirectional. A psychological orientation can induce or be induced by a given type of social relationship. And, fourth, the various elements (cognitive, motivational, and moral) of a psychological orientation tend to be consistent with one another. My argument is not that social relations determine psychological orientations without regard to the personalities of the individual participants nor is it that psychological orientations induce distinctive social relations without regard to the nature of the social situation confronting them. My thesis is rather that there is a tendency for consistency between psychological orientations and social relations that will lead to change in one or both until congruence between the two has been largely achieved. In some circumstances, it will be easier to change psychological orientations; in others, social relations can be more readily altered. I have not addressed the problem of what determines how a conflict between one’s psychological orientation to a relationship and the nature of that relationship will be resolved. This is an important problem for future work. One final comment: My discussion throughout this chapter has been of “ideal types’ of social relations. Actual social relations are inevitably more complex than my discussion would suggest. An intimate, love relationship, for example, is often characterized by considerable ambivalence: There are not only strong positive elements manifest in the relations but also intense anxieties latent within it; there are quarrels as well as embraces. In addition, it must be recognized that relationships develop and change. Apart from my brief discussion of Fig. 11.1, I have not attempted to characterize the dynamics of relationships. This, too, is an important problem for future work.

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References Abelson, R. P. (1975). Representing mundane reality in plans. In D. G. Bobrow & A. M. Collins (Eds.), Representation and understanding. New York: Academic. Abelson, R. P. (1976). Script processing in attitude formation and decision-making. In J. S. Carroll & J. W. Payne (Eds.), Cognition and social behavior. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Atkinson, J. W., & Feather, N. T. (Eds.). (1966). A theory of achievement motivation. New York: Wiley. Bales, R. F. (1958). Task roles and social role in problem-solving groups. In E. E. Maccoby, T. M. Newcomb, & E. L. Hartley (Eds.), Reading in social psychology (3rd ed.). New York: Henry Holt and Co. Banton, M. (1967). Race relations. New York: Basic Books. Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Bateson, G. (1955). A theory of play and fantasy. Psychiatric Research Reports, 2, 39–51. Benne, K. D., & Sheats, P. (1948). Functional roles and group members. Journal of Social Issues, 4, 41–49. Cartwright, D. P., & Zander, A. F. (Eds.). (1968). Group dynamics: Research and theory. New York: Harper & Row. Deutsch, M. (1949a). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129–152. Deutsch, M. (1949b). An experimental study of the effects of cooperation and competition upon group processes. Human Relations, 2, 199–232. Deutsch, M. (1962). Cooperation and trust: Some theoretical notes. In M. R. Jones (Ed.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. X). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1979). Education and distributive justice: Some reflections on grading systems. American Psychologist, 34, 391–401. Diesing, P. (1962). Reason in society. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. Freud, A. (1937). The ego and the mechanisms of defence. London: Hogarth Press. Goffman, E. F. (1974). Frame analysis. New York: Harper & Row. Head, Sir Henry. (1920). Studies in neurology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Judd, C. M. (1978). Cognitive effects of attitude and conflict resolution. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 483–498. Kelley, H. H. (1979). Personal relationships: Their structure and processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978).Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. New York: Wiley. Lewin, K. (1951). Field theory in social science. New York: Harper & Brothers. Marwell, G., & Hage, J. (1970). The organization of role relationships: A systematic description. American Sociological Reviews, 35, 884–900. McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., & Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement motive. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts. Merton, R. K. (1957). Social theory and social structure (Rev. and enlarged ed.). Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. New York: Oxford University Press. Neisser, U. (1976). Cognition and reality. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co. Rawls, J. A. (1972). A theory of justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. P. (1977). Scripts, plans, goals, and understanding: An inquiry into human knowledge structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Triandis, H. C. (1972). The analysis of subjective culture. New York: Wiley Interscience.

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Weber, M. (1957). The theory of social and economic organization (A. M. Henderson & Talcott Parsons, Trans. and Eds.). Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Weiner, B. (1974). Achievement motivation and attribution theory. Morristown, NJ: General Learning Press. Wish, M., Deutsch, M., & Kaplan, S. J. (1976). Perceived dimensions of interpersonal relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 409–420. Wish, M., & Kaplan, S. J. (1977). Toward an implicit theory of interpersonal communication. Sociometry, 40, 234–246.

Chapter 12

Tackling the Great Debate Peter T. Coleman, Robin R. Vallacher, and Andrzej Nowak

Social psychology has long suffered from split-personality disorder. From its early roots, the discipline has been alternatively conceptualized from a sociological perspective, which emphasizes the role of the environment and social conditions on the psychology of human interaction, or from the perspective of personality psychology, which privileges the instincts, sentiments, and character of the individual. The first textbook to bear the title Social Psychology was penned by a sociologist (Ross, 1908), but by 1970 about half of the social psychology textbooks published in the U.S. were written by psychologists and half were written by sociologists (Allport, 1969). Even the ancient philosophical forefathers of the discipline, Plato and Aristotle, were at odds over whether a “social contract” theory offered the best explanation of the social nature of humans (Plato), or whether a more instinctual, “political animal” view (Aristotle) best captured it (Allport, 1969). This tug-of-war continues today with the discipline’s flagship journal, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, having separate (but equal?) sections for research on personality and for interpersonal and group processes. Of course, this division within social psychology merely reflected the debate raging within the broader domain of science regarding the relative importance of nature versus nurture in our physical and social worlds. This divide was addressed initially by Darwin in the mid-1800s when he introduced the evolutionary concepts of individual-environmental fit and adaptation (Darwin, 1859). Somewhat later, Lewin (1948) addressed this issue in psychology, suggesting that neither instincts nor situations account wholly for human behavior, but rather that behavior is a function of both the person and the environment in interaction [Bf (P × E)]. This general framework influenced the theorizing of a great many social-psychological scholars after Lewin (Festinger, Kelly, Thibaut, Bandura, Johnson and Johnson, Rusbult, Van Lange, etc.), although it did not put the great debate to rest (note Mischel’s full-frontal attack on personality psychology; Mischel, 1981).

P.T. Coleman (B) Teachers College, International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

273 P.T. Coleman (ed.), Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice, Peace Psychology Book C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8_12, 

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Enter Morton Deutsch. A former student of Lewin’s, Deutsch, too, was influenced by the interactionist framework, but he found the formula [Bf (P x E)] ultimately wanting, considering it too general and too crude to bridge the great divide adequately. Then in the 1970s, Wish, Deutsch, and Kaplan set out to map empirically the “fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations” (Wish, Deutsch, & Kaplan, 1976). With these dimensions in hand, Deutsch penned his most comprehensive and ambitious theory, the theory of psychological orientations and social relations (Deutsch, 1982, 1985, 2007, in press). This theory aimed to propel Lewin’s original framework forward by conceptualizing 1) what the fundamental dimensions of E (Environment) are, and 2) how they interact with various aspects of P (Person) to ultimately influence B (Behavior). Despite this attempt at theoretical reconciliation—or perhaps because of it—Deutsch’s contribution has been largely dormant for decades, neglected by a field perhaps overly invested in its own divisions. We suggest that the time is ripe to take Lewin and Deutsch seriously, and to finally heal our field’s lingering dissociative identity disorder.

Deutsch’s Theory of Social Relations and Psychological Orientations (in brief) As the original papers detail (see Chapter 11, this volume), Deutsch’s theory of social relations and psychological orientations (1982, 1985, 2007, in press) emerged from his earlier empirical research on the fundamental dimensions of people’s perceptions of interpersonal relations (Wish et al., 1976). Through multidimensional scaling analysis of survey data, this research identified five basic dimensions of dyadic relationships: cooperative-competitive, power distribution, task-oriented

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versus social-emotional, formal versus informal, and degree of importance.1 Deutsch later theorized that these dimensions, when combined in situations, create distinctive types of social relations, and that these types of social relations would induce particular types of psychological orientations in people (Deutsch, 1982; see Thibaut & Kelley, 1959; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Kelley, 1979, 1984, 1991; Triandis, 1972 for related models). A psychological orientation (PO) is defined by Deutsch as a more or less consistent complex of cognitive, motivational, moral, and action orientations to a given situation that serve to guide one’s behaviors and responses (Deutsch, 2007). Due to pressures for consistency (a central Gestalt and Lewinian principle), specific situations will tend to elicit appropriate psychological orientations that “fit” the situation, and, consistent with Deutsch’s Crude Law of Social Relations developed earlier (1973), different types of POs will tend to propel people towards social relations that are consistent with their orientations. The PO parents employ when playing with their infant child, for example, will differ drastically from the PO they demonstrate when arguing with a traffic policeman over a ticket. According to the theory, people develop the capacity to employ different types of POs as they are necessary in the different situations they face over time. Thus, different POs are derived from peoples’ prior personal and developmental experiences, in combination with their natural predispositions. However, if people develop strong, chronic orientations (and/or if the situations they encounter are normatively weak), they may employ POs to some situations that are inconsistent with the situation, which can bring about disorienting and deleterious effects (imagine addressing a police officer as you would a petulant child). If a person is held in a maximumsecurity prison for an extended period of time, for example, he or she would likely develop a strong chronic orientation for appeasement and distain in his or her relations with authority figures, which would incline the person to gravitate towards similar relationships and situations when they get out. To illustrate, consider how the dimensions of cooperation-competition and equality-inequality of power in situations combine to affect people’s psychological orientation and visa-versa. Deutsch (1985) suggests that the basic schema for relationship power has to do with the parties’ relative power to influence each other. Differences on this dimension affects people’s motives, as well as their moral and action guides. He writes: Thus, in a cooperative, equal situation one would expect a kind of egalitarian relationship. In a cooperative, unequal relationship, the moral orientation obligates the more powerful person to employ his power in such a way as to benefit the less powerful one, not merely himself. In such a relationship, the less powerful one has the obligation to show appreciation, to defer to, and honor the more powerful person . . . In an equal, competitive relationship, one’s moral orientation is toward the value of initial equality among the competitors and the subsequent striving to achieve superiority over the others . . . In an

1 Other less basic dimensions of social relations identified in this research include enduring/ temporary, voluntary/involuntary, public/private, licit/illicit, and the number of people involved (Wish, Deutsch, & Kaplan, 1976).

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unequal, competitive relationship the moral orientations of the strong and the weak support an exploitive relationship. The strong are likely to adopt the view that the rich and powerful are biologically and, hence, morally superior . . . the weak are apt to identify with the aggressor (A. Freud, 1937) and adopt the moral orientation of the more powerful and to feel that their inferior outcomes are deserved. Or, they may feel victimized. If so, they may either develop a revolutionary moral orientation directed toward changing the nature of the existing relationship or (one) . . . of being a victim (Deutsch, 2007, pp. 9–10).

Here, Deutsch provides a sketch of the normative dynamic tendencies between particular types of social relations and distinctive psychological orientations. Deutsch is not suggesting that either social relations or psychological orientations alone determine the other, or the resulting behavior, but rather that there is a tendency for consistency between POs and social relations that will lead to changes in one or both until congruence is achieved. At times, psychological orientations will be easier to change, but at other times social relations will be more easily altered. Several aspects of this grand model of social relations are important to highlight. First, in identifying a small set of basic dimensions underlying the surface complexity and diversity of social relations (Wish et al., 1976), Deutsch provided a significant contribution to our understanding of social dynamics and a sturdy foundation for the model. Second, Deutsch’s elaboration of the theory of social relations and psychological orientations (1982, 1985, 2007, in press) provides us with a better specified understanding of how people’s perceptions of these different dimensions of social situations work in concert to affect their orientations and responses. In the Lewinian tradition, the framework characterizes social behavior as the dynamic result of psychological variables (chronic POs) interacting with different social conditions (combinations of the basic dimensions). The framework goes further, however, by describing how people are propelled by a basic need for congruence between their POs and the basic dimensions, with the resultant congruence moderated by the relative strength of these two sources of influence. And third, Deutsch’s theory highlights the importance in social relations of adaptivity: the capacity to employ different types of psychological orientations as they are necessary in different types of situations. Deutsch’s theory of social relations and psychological orientations provides an integrative and heuristic model of the basic dynamics underlying socialpsychological relations. As such, it transcends Lewin’s [Bf (P x E)] formula, providing a scaffolding to better understand some of the many unresolved issues of the P-vs.-E debate in social psychology. The current state of the literature on how individual differences (gender, competitiveness, social dominance orientation, etc.) affect negotiation and other modes of conflict resolution, for example, is fragmented, with conflicting conclusions that leave both theory and practice cluttered and confused (Lewicki, Litterer, Minton, & Saunders, 1994). Deutsch’s theory offers hope of clarifying such areas of confusion. Nevertheless, decades of neglect have left Deutsch’s theory underdeveloped. Beyond lacking sufficient empirical support, the theory is in need of rigorous theoretical refinement (Deutsch, 2007). Below, we sketch a recent program of research

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that has both employed and extended Deutsch’s theory. This research agenda builds on Deutsch’s seminal insights and provides a framework within which a wide variety of social phenomena can be conceptualized and investigated.

Conflict in 3-D: An Integrative Framework for Conflict Dynamics in Social Relations A recently developed framework on conflict in social relations (Coleman, BuiWrzosinska, Nowak, Vallacher & Kugler, working paper; Coleman, Kugler, Mitchinson, Chung, & Musallum, 2010; Coleman, Kugler, Mitchinson & Foster, working paper) builds directly on Deutsch’s theory of social relations and psychological orientations (Deutsch, 1982, 1985, 2007, in press) as well as on other influential models of social relations and conflict (Alexander, Brewer, & Hermann, 1999; Boulding, 1956, 1959; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959; Triandis, 1972; Rouhana & Fiske, 1995; Van Lange, Otten, DeBruin, & Joireman, 1997). These models all differ to some degree in their characterization of the most basic dimensions of social relations, but each emphasizes the theoretical primacy of three: (1) mixture of goal interdependence, (2) relative distribution of power, and (3) degree of total goal interdependence—relational importance. The framework integrates these dimensions within a 3-dimensionsal model of conflict in social relations (see Fig. 12.1).2 The dimensions are each specified below: 1. Mixture of goal interdependence. The first dimension represents the type and mix of goal interdependence in social relationships. It constitutes the x-axis of the model, with pure positive forms of goal interdependence (where all goals

Fig. 12.1 A basic integrative framework for conflict in social relations

2 Other basic dimensions of social relations, such as task-oriented/social-emotional, formal/ informal, licit/illicit, and so on, could also be integrated into the framework and seen as moderators or splitting parameters of the dynamics described here.

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between parties in conflict are positively linked) at the extreme left of the x-axis, pure negative interdependence (where all goals are negatively linked) at the extreme right of the x-axis, and mixed-motive types (combinations of both positively and negatively linked goals) represented as intermediate values along the x-axis. This dimension thus captures various forms of mixed-motive interdependence, from those weighted more positively (on the left side of the continuum) to those weighted more negatively (on the right side of the continuum), and with relatively balanced forms of positive and negative interdependence located near the middle. 2. Relative distribution of power. The second dimension represents the relative distribution of power between parties. This is defined in the model as the relative degree of influence each party has over the other party’s goals and outcomes (Depret & Fiske, 1993; Fiske & Berdahl, 2007; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). It constitutes the y-axis of the model, with pure types of unequal A over B influence at the top of the y-axis, pure types of unequal B over A influence at the bottom of the axis, and relatively equal forms of influence represented as intermediate values on the y-axis. 3. Degree of total goal interdependence—relational importance. The third dimension represents the relative importance of the relationship, which is conceptualized as the degree of total goal interdependence). It constitutes the z-axis of the model, with high degrees of goal interdependence between the parties in conflict located at the front of the z-axis (strong goal linkages and/or high proportions of linked goals), low degrees of interdependence located at the rear of the z-axis (no, few, or weak goal linkages), and moderate degrees of goal interdependence located along the middle of the z-axis. This dimension represents the total degree of goal interdependence between the parties, both in general in the context of their relationship and in relation to the specific goals involved in the conflict. Higher degrees of total goal interdependence promote greater levels of relational importance than do lower degrees of goal interdependence. Considered together, these three parameters capture the basic relational context in which people experience conflict (see Fig. 12.1). Thus, conflicts that appear to be similar by virtue of representing similar perceptions of incompatible activities (you and I desire the same mate) may be experienced in fundamentally different ways depending on the settings of the three parameters in the model (our mix of cooperative or competitive goals, my high or low relative power, and the high or low importance of our relationship).

Overview of the 3-D Model of Social Conflict The 3-D model of social conflict proposes that when conflicts are perceived, the three basic features of social relations (mix of interdependence, relative distribution of power, and degree of total interdependence) interact to situate parties

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psychologically in different regions of a stimulus field. A stimulus field for conflict is defined as a perceiver’s representation of his or her external world or environment (Kelley, 1997). The regions of the stimulus field, in turn, are said to induce distinct conflict orientations that shape disputants’ perceptions, emotions, values, and behaviors in the conflict. Variation along each of the three dimensions may reflect situational conditions (such as objective differences in resources or status between parties that affect relative power) and/or individual differences in chronic psychological orientations to conflict (affecting how situations are perceived). Whether an individual’s stimulus field is determined primarily by the particulars of the momentary situation, the broader relational context, or by his or her predisposition to view the situation in a particular manner (chronic orientation) depends on the relative strength of each of these factors (Deutsch, 1982; Kelley, 1997; see Mischel, 1977). Figure 12.1 depicts a basic conflict stimulus field. For theoretical purposes, it might seem useful to begin our discussion of the stimulus field in terms of its eight most extreme regions (pure competitive vs. pure cooperative, high power vs. low power, high interdependence vs. low interdependence). However, theory would predict, and research has shown, that under conditions of very low degrees of goal interdependence (no, few, or weak goal linkages between parties), the importance of conflict engagement tends to dissipate (Deutsch, 1973) and that disputants’ conflict orientations and behaviors become categorically more uniform (Kugler & Coleman, 2010). Thus, the four regions operating under conditions of low interdependence effectively collapse to one. Accordingly, the 3-D model focuses on five main regions of the stimulus field: Region 1 (situations of relative high-power, cooperative goals, and high-interdependence), Region 2 (high-power, competitive, high-interdependence), Region 3 (low-power, cooperative, high-interdependence), Region 4 (low-power, competitive, high-interdependence), and Region 5 (low degrees of interdependence). The model proposes that each of the five extreme regions of the conflict stimulus field will induce distinct psychological orientations to conflict that afford particular perceptions, values, emotions and behaviors relevant to that type of situation (see Deutsch, 1982, 1985, 2007, in press; Kelley, 1997; Van Lange et. al., 1997; see Fig. 12.2). In other words, the different regions of the stimulus field will tend to evoke very different conflict orientations, which partially determine (1) how conflicts are perceived (as mutual problems or win-lose challenges), (2) how it feels to be in the situation (relatively comfortable versus anxiety-provoking), (3) what is likely to be valued in the situation (solving problems and sharing benefits with other parties versus conquering them), and (4) how to best go about responding to the conflict and obtaining these values and goals (through respectful dialogue and problem-solving versus forceful domination or submission to power). Region 1 (high-power, cooperative, high-interdependence) is said to induce a benevolence orientation to conflict: a benign, cooperative orientation in which people value enhancing and sharing mutual outcomes and engage in constructive behaviors such as open dialogue, pro-social modeling, and joint problem-solving.

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Fig. 12.2 Psychological orientations in the basic conflict stimulus field

This high-power, benign region is likely to be experienced as more positive when in conflict, although it will also afford a feeling of empathy and concern for others in the dispute. In contrast, Region 2 (high-power, competitive, high-interdependence) should induce a dominance orientation: a more exploitive, controlling orientation to conflict in which people value winning at all costs, maximizing only their own outcomes, and perhaps inflicting harm on others, and using tactics of force, control, and deceit to achieve their aspirations. Region 3 (low-power, cooperative, highinterdependence) should promote an orientation of support to conflict, such that people value the supportive leadership and expected benefits bestowed by those in higher power, and engage in respectful followership and assistance. Although representing a low-power position, Region 3 should elicit less anxiety and stress than Region 4 (low-power, competitive, high-interdependence). Indeed, this region should induce an orientation of appeasement, such that people feel the most stress and resentment, value avoiding harm as much as possible, seek opportunities for escape, and engage in coercive tactics such as sabotage whenever possible. In Region 5 (low degrees of interdependence), we would expect to see an orientation of autonomy, a preference for establishing one’s independence from others in conflict, feelings of indifference, and disengaged behavioral tendencies consistent with this orientation.

Preliminary Empirical Support for the 3-D Model of Social Conflict Recent studies testing the model (Coleman et al., 2010; Coleman et al., working paper; Coleman & Kugler, working paper) provide support for these distinct region-orientation associations. When faced with a benevolence scenario (relative high-power, cooperative, high-interdependence relations), participants described an

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active-cooperative orientation to conflict. In particular, participants said they valued taking responsibility for the problem and listening to the other, and they also expressed genuine concern for their low-power counterpart. In marked contrast, dominance scenarios (relative high-power, competitive, high-interdependence) tended to induce a relatively angry, threatening, and confrontational approach to the other party, with participants expressing heightened concerns for their own power, respect, and recognition. Support scenarios (low-power, cooperative, highinterdependence) promoted an orientation characterized by greater appreciative support than did the other regions. Participants in this region respectfully sought clarification of roles and responsibilities, worked harder, and felt concern for their superior in the conflict. A far different pattern was observed among participants faced with appeasement scenarios (low-power, competitive, high-interdependence). These participants expressed higher levels of fear and anger, a strong need to tolerate the situation, and a desire to look for possibilities to sabotage the supervisor if the opportunity presented itself. Autonomy scenarios (equal-power, mixed-motive, low-interdependence), in contrast to the others, promoted a less intense experience of the conflict, such that participants indicated a desire to simply move on or exit the relationship. The model also proposes that when parties become situated in a particular region of the 3-D stimulus field for extended periods of time (e.g., stuck in low-power in a protracted competitive conflict with another), they tend to develop a strong orientation for that region, which can become chronic. Research on high-power/low-power party dynamics provides strong evidence of chronicity in conflict orientations. Magee and Galinsky (2008), for example, cite research detailing the psycho-social transformations that take place in organizations that promote a chronic dominance orientation among the powerful parties, buttressed by their ongoing attempts to retain and acquire power. Case studies of state-level international negotiations also provide strong support for the idea that high-power parties become very comfortable with dominance orientations, and find it difficult to employ other strategies when power shifts and conditions change. This research suggests that low-power parties, too, tend to become very accustomed to their role and skilled in performing it (Zartman & Rubin, 2002). The theory proposes that more adaptive orientations to conflict—those that allow for the use of different orientations and behaviors in order to satisfy goals in a manner not incongruent with the demands of the various situations encountered—should lead to greater general satisfaction with conflict processes and outcomes over time. Research has provided support for this idea. Case-based research on interstate negotiations found that parties tended to be more effective in negotiations to the extent that they were able to adjust their orientations and behavior to the relative (and relevant) power of the other side (Zartman & Rubin, 2002). In a correlational study (Coleman, Mitchinson, & Kugler, 2010), investigators found that more adaptive individuals (individuals who saw utility in employing all five orientations when necessary) had greater levels of satisfaction with conflicts in general than did less adaptive individuals. This study also found that more adaptive individuals learned

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more from conflicts, and were better able to focus on both long-term and short-term goals than were less-adaptive individuals. A third study, conducted through the collection of critical-incidents of actual conflicts in participants’ lives, found that people who were able to employ orientations and behaviors that were not incongruent with the situation (not ill-fitting) expressed greater satisfaction with their own behavior, as well as with the processes, outcomes, and relationships in those conflicts (Coleman & Kugler, 2010). Another dimension of interpersonal relations identified by Wish et al. (1976) is task-oriented versus social-emotional relations (Parsons, 1951). In general, task-oriented relations have been characterized as more impersonal, objective, universalistic, and emotionally detached (Deutsch, 1985). In contrast, social-emotional relations are more personal, subjective, particularistic, and emotionally involving. Consistent with Deising (1962) and Deutsch (1982), the 3-D model predicts that differences along this dimension will significantly affect what disputants see as “reasonable” or rational orientations and behaviors in conflict. Situations in which people are primarily concerned with the effective accomplishment of tasks tend to induce more economically-rational orientations. In particular, efficiency, utility, and maximization of goals are highly valued, typically at the expense of social-emotional concerns such as inclusion and solidarity. Task-oriented situations, moreover, tend to induce efficient conflict orientations characterized by dominance and autonomy. In contrast, situations in which the parties are primarily interested in social relations and dynamics tend to induce orientations and behaviors that are more social-emotionally-rational (such as benevolence and support), often at the expense of efficiency and utilitarian goal-achievement. Recent research on relational accommodation in negotiations offers indirect support for these proposed differences between task- and social-emotional orientations toward social relations (Curhan, Neale, Ross, & Rosencranz-Engelmann, 2008). Curhan et al. (2008) observed that when negotiating dyads held highly relational goals, their negotiations resulted in more inefficient economic outcomes but higher levels of relational capital than when they held goals that were focused on efficient task-achievement. However, the proposed relationship between task versus social relations and the conflict orientations from our model have yet to be investigated. Finally, the 3-D model predicts that conflictful relations between parties that remain quasi-stable over an extended period of time will lead to the internalization of conflict orientations for the relationship (Proposition 4). Such internalization, in turn, should establish expectations and behavioral scripts for conflict that tend to resist change. Zartman and Rubin (2002) found evidence of this type of coordination dynamic between high- and low-power negotiators in their analysis of international conflicts. When high-low power relationships between parties were well-established through an on-going relationship (e.g., U.S. and Mexico), the parties tended to know their relative-power roles and enact them in a complementary manner. Even if important changes in the basic parameters occur (such as power shifts), the strength of the relational orientation may maintain the original dynamic, or at least delay significant changes in the dynamic.

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Moving Forward: The Future of Deutsch’s Theory of Social Relations and Psychological Orientations The 3-D model presented in this chapter illustrates the integrative value of Deutsch’s theory. It not only shows the commonality among otherwise distinct areas of scholarship, it also reconciles the historically contentious issue of situational versus personal determinants of basic social processes. The model, moreover, is heuristic and forward looking. It provides a framework within which a host of social psychological phenomena can be reframed and investigated with respect to the interactions among a small set of basic parameters. In linking the surface manifestation of social behavior to these interactions over time, the 3-D model captures the potential for dynamism that is increasingly recognized as central to theoretical understanding in social psychology (cf. Vallacher & Nowak, 2007). Nonetheless, the 3-D model should be viewed as a framework, not as a comprehensive theory. Considerable work within this framework is required to capitalize more fully on Deutsch’s vision of identifying the fundamental dimensions of social relations, and to establish the added value of the framework for capturing the essence of social psychological dynamics. Despite the advances in methodology in recent years, much of social psychological research remains focused on the short-term of effects of independent variables to the benign neglect of the temporal trajectories associated with personal, interpersonal, and collective processes (Vallacher, Read, & Nowak, 2002). This focus severely limits utility of social psychological research for informing real-world applications (cf. Fiske & Berdahl, 2007). The development of conceptual frameworks like the 3-D model is therefore timely, providing us with the tools required to probe the dynamical properties at the heart of social experience.

Morton Deutsch’s Comments Chapter by Peter T. Coleman, Robin R. Vallacher, and Andrzej Nowak In 1982, when I published “Interdependence and Psychological Orientation,” I thought it was an important theoretical paper with some new ideas that were fundamental to social psychology. I thought it was a rough sketch that needed further elaboration. At the time, I was busy with other matters and never did any further work with it. In the 1970s and 1980s, social psychology, as well as general psychology, was very cognitive in its orientation: underplaying motivation and completely ignoring the moral aspect of social relations. In my concept of psychological orientation, I sought to remedy this imbalance by including motivational and moral components as well as cognitive ones. Later, (Deutsch, 2007), I introduced an action component to the psychological orientation so that I now define it to consist of four interrelated components: cognitive, motivational, moral, and action.

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Also, since the paper was meant to be relevant to all types of social relations, it went beyond my prior work on cooperation-competition and introduced other important dimensions that determine the nature of social relations: power (equality versus inequality); task-oriented versus social emotions; formal versus informal; intense and important versus superficial. Since the 1982 publication of “Interdependence and Psychological Orientation”, it was completely ignored by other scholars until recently. In the Spring of 2007, I was invited to give a talk at the Conference on Social Justice at New York University. I entitled my talk, (Deutsch, 2007) “Two Important but Neglected Ideas for Social Psychology as They Relate to Social Justice.” The first neglected idea was Deutsch’s Crude Law of Social Relations which is: The characteristic process and effects elicited by a given type of social relationship (e.g., cooperative or competitive) tend also to elicit that type of social relationship; and a typical effect of any type of relationship tends to induce the other typical effects of the relationship. Although this idea was published in Deutsch 1973, it has also been largely neglected until recently, except for my own usage of it in my work on distributive justice (Deutsch, 1985). I think the Crude Law is an important law in psychology but it is clearly “crude” and needs considerable work to refine it. The second neglected idea discussed in my 2007 paper has to do with Interdependence and Psychological orientation. Both of these ideas have recently been taken up by members of the Dynamical Systems Team organized by Peter Coleman and supported by grants awarded to the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR). I digress briefly, to note that, probably the best academic decision in my career was selecting Peter to become director of the ICCCR when I retired as its Director. He is an outstanding and productive theorist, researcher, teacher, administrator, and fundraiser. Andrzej Nowak, a Polish psychologist who has contributed a great deal to the dynamical systems approach in social psychology, became interested in the Crude Law and he’s done work to develop it more systematically (see Nowak, Deutsch, Bartkowski, & Solomon, 2010). The chapter by Peter Coleman, Robin Vallacher, and Andrzej Nowak, in this volume, is a fine systematic development of some of my ideas presented in Deutsch, 1982. Their three dimensional model illustrates how conflict situations can be more fully understood by understanding the dimensional structure of the situation in which conflict is occurring. The different regions of the 3-D social space induce different conflict orientations. Although they describe beautifully the conflict orientations that “fit” different regions of the 3-D space, they do not specifically characterize the four elements (Cognitive, motivational, moral, and action) that I believe compose a psychological orientation.

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In their concluding section, moving forward, they make the very important point that much of social psychology research neglects “the temporal trajectories associated with personal, interpersonal, and collective processes.” Unfortunately, my framework also doesn’t deal with a temporal trajectory. It only indicated that change will occur if there is a poor fit between the characteristics of social situations that one is in and one’s psychological orientation. What determines the direction of the change and the time required for the change is not developed. Nor does it indicate how one moves into one or another location in the multidimensional space. (Although here the “Crude Law” could be applicable). The framework also depends on other theorists to explain how one acquires through various experiences, the psychological orientations to fit the various social situations in which one gets involved. Clearly, there are many gaps in my framework that still need filling. Despite these important gaps, over the years, I have wondered whether the concept of psychological orientation could be applied more generally. (My former students know that I view myself to be a “grandiose theorist” who seeks to extend his ideas as far as possible). Let us suppose the stimulus situation is not a social situation—could the concept of psychological orientation be applied? There are many kinds of non-social stimulus situations that one may confront outside of one’s body (e.g., a lightening storm, a wild animal, a beautiful sunset, music) as well as within one’s body (e.g., a severe pain, hunger, a pleasant memory). Are there ways of characterizing the psychologically relevant dimension of non-social external stimulus environments and internal ones? Are the dimensions that usefully characterize social relations applicable to non-social situations? Do psychological orientations (consisting of cognitive, motivational, moral, and action elements) develop to “fit” the external or internal non-social situations that confronts one? There are many more questions that might be asked. A question that I am not sure how to answer is whether there is a moral element in all psychological orientations. I think most psychologists would say “no”. Even so, I think it would be a useful stretch of our minds to consider if there were a moral element in one’s psychological orientations that determines one’s response to a stimulus situation of any kind. Take, for instance, an intense storm: clearly, one’s cognition, motivational, and action elements may well be focused on actions that will make you safe, and do you not have a moral obligation to make yourself safe; and is there, also, not a moral element to help others that you can help to be safe? And if so, is it acquired through socialization or evolution or both? I have engaged in these musings because I believe that the development of a comprehensive psychological theory requires a way of characterizing both the psychological environments people face and how they confront them. Another question that I am not sure how to answer is whether some of the

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basic dimensions of non-social situations that one confronts are similar to those that characterize social relations (with minor changes?). For example, I think that one could characterize many non-social environments, in which a person is involved, by such dimensions as: its potential benefit or harm to oneself; one’s relative power in the situation to determine whether one benefits or is harmed; the personal or impersonal character of the situation; and the importance or intensity of the situation. Thus, being in a strong hurricane would be experienced as very harmful, as having little power, as being impersonal and intense. I hope these musings of mine provoke some productive thought in others.

References Deutsch, M. (1985) Distributive justice: A psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (2007). Two important but neglected ideas for social psychology as they relate to social justice. Unpublished paper, available at ICCCR website: www.tc.edu/icccr. Nowak, A., Deutsch, M., Bartkowski, W., & Solomon, S. (2010). From crude law to civil relations: the dynamics and potential resolution of intractable conflict. Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, 16(2), 189–210.

References Alexander, M. G., Brewer, M. B., & Hermann, R. K. (1999). Images and affect: A functional analysis of out-group stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77, 78–93. Allport, G. W. (1969). The historical background of modern social psychology. In G. Lindzey & E. Aronson (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (2nd ed., Vol. 1, Chapter 1, pp. 1–80). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Boulding, K. E. (1956). General systems theory-the skeleton of science. Management Science, 2, 197–208. Boulding, K. E. (1959). National images and international systems. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 3, 120–131. Coleman, P. T., Bui-Wrzosinska, L., Nowak, A., Vallacher, R., & Kugler, K. G. (Working paper). Getting down to basics: An integrative framework for conflict dynamics in social relations. Coleman, P. T., & Kugler, K. G. (2010). Tracking adaptivity: Developing a measure to assess leader smart power in organizations. Unpublished Manuscript. Coleman, P. T., Kugler, K., Musallam, N., Mitchinson, A., & Chung, C. (2010). The view from above and below: The effects of power asymmetries and interdependence on conflict dynamics and outcomes. Negotiation and Conflict Management Journal, 3, 283–311. Coleman, P. T., Kugler, K. G., Mitchinson, A., & Foster, C. (working paper). Navigating power and conflict at work: The effects of power asymmetries and Interdependence on conflict in organizations. Unpublished manuscript. Coleman, P. T., Mitchinson, A., & Kugler, K. G. (2010). Conflict, power and leadership: The value of adaptivity over the long-haul. Unpublished manuscript.

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Curhan, J. R., Neale, M. A., Ross, L., & Rosencranz-Engelmann, J. (2008). Relational accommodation in negotiation: Effects of egalitarianism and gender on economic efficiency and relational capital. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 107(2), 192–205. Darwin, C. (1859). On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. London: John Murray. Deising, P. (1962). Reason in society: Five types of decisions and their social conditions. Urbana; IL: University of Illinois Press. Depret, E. F., & Fiske, S. T. (1993). Social cognition and power: Some cognitive consequences of social structure as a source of control deprivation. In G. Weary, F. Gleicher, & K. Marsh (Eds.), Control motivation and social cognition (pp. 176–202). New York: Springer. Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1982). Interdependence and psychological orientation. In V. Derlega & J. L. Grzelak (Eds.), Cooperation and helping behavior: Theories and research (pp. 15–36). Orlando, FL: Academic. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social-psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (2007). Two important but neglected ideas for social psychology as they relate to social justice. Paper presented at the Conference on Social Justice, New York, NY, April 2007. Deutsch, M. (in press). A theory of cooperation and competition and beyond. In A. E. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Theory in social psychology. Fiske, S. T., & Berdahl, J. (2007). Social power. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (2nd ed., pp. 678–692). New York: Guilford. Kelley, H. H. (1979). Personal relationships. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Kelley, H. H. (1984). The theoretical description of interdependence by means of transitions lists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 956–982. Kelley, H. H. (1991). Lewin, situations, and interdependence. Journal of Social Issues, 47, 211–233. Kelley, H. H. (1997). The “stimulus field” for interpersonal phenomena: The source of language and thought about interpersonal events. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 1, 140–169. Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. New York: Wiley. Kugler K. G., & Coleman, P. T. (2010). Independence, conflict and autonomy: An experimental study. Unpublished Manuscript. Lewicki, R., Saunders D. M., & Minton, J. W. (Eds.). (1999). Individual differences. In Negotiation, (3rd ed., pp. 353–378). Boston: Irwin McGraw-Hill. Lewin, K. (1948). Resolving social conflicts. New York: Harper. Magee, J. C., & Galinsky, A. D. (2008). Social hierarchy: The self-reinforcing nature of power and status. Academy of Management Annals, 2, 351–398. Mischel, W. (1977). The interaction of person and situation. In D. Magnusson & N. S. Endler (Ed.), Personality at the crossroads: Current issues in interactional psychology (pp. 333–352). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Mischel, W. (1981). Current issues and challenges in personality. In Ludy Benjamin Jr. (Ed.), The G. Stanley Hall lecture series (Vol. 1., pp. 85–99). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Parsons, T. (1951). The social system. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Ross, E. A. (1908). Social psychology. New York: Macmillan. Rouhana, N. N., & Fiske, S. T. (1995). Perception of power, threat and conflict intensity in asymmetric intergroup conflict: Arab and Jewish citizens of Israel. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39, 49–81. Thibaut, J. W., & Kelley, H. H. (1959). The social psychology of groups. New York: Wiley. Triandis, H. C. (1972). The analysis of subjective culture. New York: Wiley-Interscience.

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Vallacher, R. R., & Nowak, A. (2007). Dynamical social psychology: Finding order in the flow of human experience. In A. W. Kruglanski & E. T. Higgins (Eds.), Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles (2nd ed., pp. 734–758). New York: Guilford Publications. Vallacher, R. R., Read, S. J., & Nowak, A. (Eds.). (2002). The dynamical perspective in personality and social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 6 (special issue). Van Lange, P. A. M., Otten, W., DeBruin, E. M. N., & Joireman, J. A. (1997). Development of prosocial, individualistic, and competitive orientations: Theory and preliminary evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 733–746. Wish, M., Deutsch, M., & Kaplan, S. J. (1976). Perceived dimensions of interpersonal relations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 409–420. Zartman, I. W., & Rubin, J. Z. (2002). Power and negotiation. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Chapter 13

Constructive Conflict Management for the World Today Morton Deutsch

This chapter is concerned with the difficult question of what our field can contribute to preventing and resolving the sorts of destructive conflicts which are so prevalent in our world today at the interpersonal, intergroup, interethnic, and international levels. In this chapter, I outline an approach to this question. The chapter is divided into three parts. The first is a brief discussion of some of the factors which determine whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course. The second deals with the prevention of destructive conflicts—here I consider the potential roles of government, education, the media, religion, and industry. The third is concerned with how to manage intractable, destructive conflicts. My chapter is concerned with the difficult but important question of what our field can contribute to preventing and managing the sorts of destructive conflicts which are so prevalent in our world today at the interpersonal, intergroup, interethnic, and international levels. I do not claim to have the answer. What I wish to do here is outline an approach to this question. Admittedly, it has a utopian cast. I call upon you and other members of the community of scholars and practitioners concerned with conflict to actualize it and to fill in the details and many gaps in my outline. I note that as a social psychologist, I emphasize socio-psychological factors and do not consider sufficiently the economic, political, and institutional conditions which should be part of a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary approach. My chapter is divided into three parts. The first is a brief discussion of some of the factors and conditions which determine whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course. The second deals with the prevention of destructive conflicts— here I consider the potential roles of government (from the UN to the village), of education of parents as well as children, of the media, of religion, and of industry. In the third, I am concerned with how to manage intractable, destructive conflicts.

Deutsch, M. (1994). Constructive conflict management for the world today. International Journal of Conflict Management, 5, 111–129. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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Factors Affecting the Course of Conflict In this part, I consider the determinants of whether a conflict takes a constructive or destructive course. My discussion is guided by a hypothesis which I have developed as a result of much research by my students and myself (Deutsch, 1973, 1985). The hypothesis, which I have termed “Deutsch’s crude law of social relations,” is that the characteristic processes and effects elicited by a given type of social relationship (e.g., cooperative or competitive) also tend to elicit that type of social relationship. Thus, cooperation induces and is induced by a perceived similarity in beliefs and attitudes, a readiness to be helpful, openness in communication, trusting and friendly attitudes, sensitivity to common interests and deemphasis of opposed interests, an orientation toward enhancing mutual power rather than power differences, and so on. Similarly, competition induces and is induced by the use of tactics of coercion, threat, or deception; attempts to enhance the power differences between oneself and the other; poor communication; minimization of the awareness of similarities in values and increased sensitivity to opposed interests; suspicious and hostile attitudes; the importance, rigidity, and size of the issues in conflict; and so on. In other words, if one has systematic knowledge of the effects of cooperative and competitive processes, one will have systematic knowledge of the conditions which typically give rise to such processes, and, by extension, to the conditions which affect whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course. My early theory of cooperation and competition (Deutsch, 1949) is a theory of the effects of cooperative and competitive processes. Hence, from the crude law of social relations stated earlier, it follows that this theory provides insight into the conditions which give rise to cooperative and competitive processes. Understanding the conditions which give rise to cooperative or competitive social processes, as well as their characteristics, is central to understanding the circumstances which give rise to constructive or destructive processes of conflict resolution. A constructive process of conflict resolution is, in its essence, similar to an effective cooperative problem-solving process, while a destructive process is similar to a process of competitive interaction. Since much is known about the nature of cooperative and competitive processes, and the conditions which give rise to each from my work and the work of other scholars (see Deutsch, 1973, 1985, as well as Johnson & Johnson, 1983, 1991, for summaries), much of this knowledge can be applied to understanding the factors which determine whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course. The effects of cooperative and competitive orientations on conflict processes have been studied extensively (see Deutsch, 1973, for a summary). As indicated earlier in this section, cooperative orientations generally lead to cooperative or constructive processes of conflict resolution. In contrast, a competitive orientation usually leads to a destructive conflict process which has the following characteristics: 1. Communication between the parties is unreliable and impoverished. Either available communication channels and opportunities are not utilized or are used to try to mislead or intimidate. Little confidence is placed in information obtained

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directly from the other party; espionage and other circuitous means of obtaining information are relied upon. Poor communication enhances the possibility of error and misinformation of the sort likely to reinforce preexisting orientations and expectations. Thus, the ability of one party to notice and respond to shifts away from a win-lose orientation by the other party becomes impaired. 2. The competitive orientation to conflict stimulates the view that the solution can only be imposed by one side or the other through superior force, deception, or cleverness. The enhancement of one’s own and the minimization of the other’s power become objectives. The attempt by each party to create or maintain a power difference favorable to its own side tends to expand the scope of the conflict from a focus on the immediate issue to a conflict over the power to impose one’s preference upon the other. 3. The competitive conflict leads to a suspicious, hostile attitude that increases sensitivity to differences and threats while minimizing awareness of similarities. This, in turn, makes the usually accepted norms of conduct and morality less applicable. It permits behavior toward the other that would be considered outrageous if directed toward someone like oneself. Since neither side is likely to grant moral superiority to the other, the conflict is likely to escalate as one side or the other engages in behavior morally outrageous to the other. There are many factors influencing whether parties in conflict will approach their conflict as a mutual problem to be resolved through cooperative effort or as a winlose conflict. In addition to the sorts of factors that are deductible from the “crude law of social relations,” there are the ideologies, values, personalities, resources, and skills of the conflicting parties; the prior relationship between them; the nature of the issues involved in the conflict; and the political, cultural, social, economic, and institutional contexts within which the conflict is occurring. Elsewhere (Deutsch, in press), I have discussed some of the foregoing as they bear on the course of conflict. Here, I wish to emphasize that the prevention of destructive conflict as well as its management requires particularized knowledge of the conditions and circumstances which lead a specific conflict to take a malevolent form as well as generalized knowledge of the factors that contribute to the escalation and de-escalation of conflict.

Prevention of Destructive Conflict: A Utopian Perspective A utopian and ambitious program for the prevention of destructive conflict is outlined below. It is difficult to estimate its costs. But surely they would be infinitesimal compared to the continuously occurring direct and indirect costs of destructive conflict. Consider some rough estimates: over six hundred billion dollars were spent annually on weapons in recent years; from 1960 to 1990, world military expenditures add up to over 21 trillion dollars; over 23 million people have been killed in the 149 wars since World War II (Sivard, 1991, 1993); the economic and physical destruction due to war and civil strife are in the billions; at least 18.9 million people

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were refugees in 1992 as a result of war or civil strife; a leading cause of death among youth is violence; millions of children and spouses are subjected to physical abuse; there are approximately 3 million incidents of attempted or completed assault, rape, and robbery taking place at schools annually in the U. S.; one in ten students is regularly harassed or attacked by bullies; millions of adults and children suffer economic and psychological loss due to family breakups; prejudice and discrimination, sexism and racism inflict economic distress and psychological harm on millions of children and adults. Of course, not even the most ambitious program to prevent destructive conflicts would eliminate all such costs. However, even if such a program were only moderately successful, there seems to be little doubt that it would be beneficial economically as well as in creating the conditions for a more congenial, humane, and civilized social life. In this part, a number of different institutions—government, education, the media, religion, and industry—are considered in terms of what they can do to prevent destructive conflict. In each institution—at every level—the leading figures can (1) articulate and support a normative framework for encouraging constructive rather than destructive conflict resolution and they can help to make it widely known, salient, and popular; (2) serve as a good model in the way he or she manages conflict and provides leadership; (3) develop and provide incentives for constructive behavior and deterrents for destructive behavior; (4) develop and provide opportunities for the acquisition of the skills involved in constructive conflict resolution through education and training; and (5) develop and provide third-party facilities for dispute resolution such as conciliation, mediation, arbitration, and judicial procedures. I now turn to the discussion of what different types of institutions can do. My discussion is meant to be illustrative rather than systematic or exhaustive.

Government United Nations The United Nations has a well-articulated normative framework for preventing war and for promoting human rights and a sustainable environment (Brenes-Castro, 1991). However, I suspect that only a tiny minority of the people in the major powers, as well as in the rest of the world have any knowledge of it; it is clearly not salient for them. I think this is also true for the great majority of the political leaders of the various countries throughout the world. Clearly, without extensive efforts by the UN, as well as its member nations and affiliated organizations, to disseminate information, to raise public consciousness, and to develop popular and political support for actions to implement its normative framework, it will have little influence. My impression is that the UN central headquarters and its various agencies do not typically provide an effective model of constructive conflict resolution. They tend to

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be administered autocratically with internal conflict frequently being suppressed or handled by fiat. I suggest that it would be very valuable if the UN headquarters were to establish an institute for conflict resolution and mediation in its own headquarters which would be oriented internally, toward its own functioning as an organization. The Institute would have three main functions: (1) educating the administrators and staff of the UN in the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of constructive conflict resolution; (2) mediation (conciliation or arbitration) of conflicts which the conflicting parties can not resolve by themselves; and (3) providing early warning of potentially destructive conflicts which should be addressed. The effective functioning of such an Institute would provide a useful model to the representatives of the various nations which compose the UN. As Peck (1993) has suggested in her paper on preventive diplomacy, the UN could do more than serve as a model. It could also help to develop regional Institutes for Conflict Resolution and Mediation which would also have three main functions: (1) educating the political and other influential leaders in the various nations composing the region; (2) mediation of inter-nation disputes; and (3) an early warning and proactive function to identify potential and emerging conflicts which should start a process of constructive interaction about the issues involved in the conflict. To establish these regional institutes and to facilitate their functioning, the UN would have to establish an international institute to help to train the personnel who would staff the regional institutes and to provide various centralized resources to support their functioning (initial funding, research, technical assistance, curricula, materials, etc.). The personnel of the regional institutes would be recruited so as to be representative of the various nations and ethnic groups in the region as well as to be representative of different influential segments within each nation. Let us, for example, suppose that a Balkan Institute for Dispute Resolution had existed prior to the breakup of Yugoslavia. It would have educated the various leaders of the different ethnic groups in a series of workshops where they would have had the opportunity to meet and discuss their existing and potential conflicts in a benign atmosphere. The Balkan Institute, through its knowledge of the region, would also have been able to provide early warning and mediation of potentially destructive conflicts which were emerging. It could also have alerted the UN so that the international community could have acted to encourage mediation of the conflict through persuasion, incentives, and deterrents. Would such a Balkan Institute have led to a more constructive resolution of the conflicts among the ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia? Possibly not, after all— not all attempts at prevention of a potential flu epidemic are successful. However, we have good reason to believe that education in good health practices, early identification of a threatening disease, and prompt intervention to prevent it help to reduce its destructive potential. Similarly, it is reasonable to expect that education in the practices of constructive conflict resolution, early identification of a potentially destructive conflict, and prompt intervention to help conflicting parties when they need assistance will reduce the chances that a conflict will spread and escalate. It is, of course, true that some political leaders are not interested in being educated nor in mediation when they feel they have the military power to get their way.

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Here, the role of the UN is to provide timely and strong deterrents to the use of that power. It seems likely that the earlier such deterrents are employed, the less likely that the military power will be used in a conflict if more constructive means of dealing with it are also made salient.

United States Here, I shall primarily address what the United States or any other government could do internally. Externally, by effective leadership, it could do much to promote within the UN the creation of the kind of institutions which have been described above. Also, by example, through its active participation in the relevant regional institutes, it could serve as a model for the participation of other nations in such institutes. As a superpower, the US may need to participate in several regional institutes. The United States, as most other governments, has no well-developed institutions for bringing to the attention of either the executive or legislative branches emerging social problems and possible programs of remediation in a systematic way. There is not a social science advisory council nor a national social health council to develop and keep regular track of such national indicators as the quality of life; the occurrence of violence, institutional bias, discrimination, and prejudice with regard to race, religion, national origin, gender, age, sexual orientation, and physical disability; the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and behavior that exist within the population regarding the promotion of good health practices, productive work, constructive conflict, and stable families; the nature of the institution and programs which exist for reducing bias and prejudice, improving health practices, preventing destructive conflict, etc. This is not to say that much of this information does not exist within the different agencies of the government, but this information is not brought together in a systematic way, and in a manner which leads to policy and program recommendations, at a high enough level of government to affect the President and Congress directly as is the case for international and economic issues. There are, of course, other valuable actions the government could take. It could establish institutes, similar to the ones previously prescribed for the UN, at the national and regional levels and encourage such institutes at the state and local levels. While there are many effective agencies for industrial disputes at the different levels of government, there is a dearth of institutions for dealing with other kinds of disputes. In addition to creating new institutions, there are other important things that can be done to foster an atmosphere which promotes constructive conflict resolution. The President as well as other influential leaders in the executive and legislative branches could articulate and implement a normative framework which supports constructive conflict resolution and condemns violence, bias, prejudice, and discrimination. There are an infinite number of ways to do this. They essentially involve the following core elements: (1) clear articulation of the norms; (2) education of officials and the public in their value; (3) exemplifying the norms in one’s

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official actions and behavior (including appointments and political campaigns); (4) honoring individuals and groups who are leaders in support of the framework; (5) attempting to educate and convert those who violate the norms; (6) placing various forms of nonviolent public pressure (e.g., condemning, shaming, ostracizing, boycotting, sit-ins, etc.) on those who persist in such violations (see Sharp, 1973, for a splendid elaboration); (7) crafting and passing legislation which would make those who engage in violence, bias, prejudice, and discrimination open to civil suit for the economic and psychological damage they do to groups and individuals; (8) encouraging educational institutions, at all levels, to educate their students in the knowledge, attitudes, and skills of constructive conflict resolution; and (9) supporting research to develop further basic knowledge in this area, including knowledge about the most effective ways of educating people in conflict resolution skills. These sorts of actions can be taken by political leaders at all levels of government—national, state, and local. Only a few political leaders have had the foresight and political courage to make the prevention of destructive conflict one of the central themes in the conduct of their political office: Foresight, because as important as the issue is today, it will be even more important in the future, and political courage because most ethnic, racial, and religious groups have little difficulty in recognizing how they are subjected to discrimination and prejudice but take umbrage at the suggestion that they also inflict it upon others.

Education Education in this area should start prior to birth. In prenatal clinics as well as through their contacts with pediatricians, nurses, and other health-care providers, prospective parents should be taught about methods of constructive conflict resolution for parent-parent and parent-child conflicts and also about mediation for child-child conflicts (see Deutsch & Brickman, 1994). Educational institutions, at all levels, can provide education for their students by modeling constructive conflict resolution as well as by direct training in conflict resolution and mediation, and also indirectly by infusing its study in various subject-matters (e.g., by analyzing conflict in literature, history, science). What Not to do in a Conflict. Education in conflict resolution (Deutsch, 1993) helps people learn what not to do (i.e., how to avoid getting into a destructive process) and what to do (i.e., how to foster a constructive process) in a conflict. 1. Define a conflict as a “win-lose” one when it is possible for both to win (i.e., know what type of conflict you are in). 2. Avoid violence and the use of threats even when one is very angry (i.e., know the harmful consequences of violence and how to actively channel your anger in ways that are not violent; learn to control the thoughts, feelings, and behavior which are apt to stimulate violence in oneself or the other).

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3. Avoid attacking the other’s pride, self-esteem, security, his/her identity, or those with whom s/he identifies (i.e., attack the other’s behavior or ideas, not the other). 4. Don’t confuse your “positions” with your “interests” (your initial positions on an issue may be opposed but not your real interests). 5. Avoid ethnocentrism: understand and accept the reality of cultural differences (i.e., what you take to be self-evident and right may not seem that way to someone from a different cultural background and vice versa). 6. Don’t neglect your own interests or the interests of the other (i.e., communicate your interests clearly and firmly to the other, and listen attentively and empathically to the other’s expression of his/her interests). 7. Don’t avoid conflict; face it (i.e., learn the typical defenses you employ to evade the anxiety often associated with conflict; also learn what kinds of conflicts are best avoided—e.g., those that are inherently unresolvable and win-lose conflicts in which you will be a loser). 8. Avoid black-white thinking as well as stereotyping and demonizing the other during heated conflict (i.e., learn to be alert to bias, misperceptions, and misjudgments that commonly occur during heated conflict). What to do in a Conflict. Some of the things people can learn to do, as a result of training, which will foster constructive conflict resolution are: 1. Find common ground between oneself and the other (by identifying shared values, interests, friends, etc. to help establish cooperative bonds). 2. Listen and communicate honestly and effectively so that the underlying feelings as well as thoughts are clearly understood, and check continually one’s success in doing so (the feeling of being understood and being understood are both important). 3. Take the perspective of the other (skills in putting oneself “in the shoes of the other” can be enhanced through role reversal). 4. Social problem-solve. This involves learning to do several things: (a) Reframe the conflict so that it is perceived as a mutual problem requiring cooperative effort; (b) Define the conflict through identification of the incompatible actions, values, interests, goals, needs, or beliefs; (c) Diagnose the conditions and circumstances which reduce or enhance the incompatibilities; (d) Search for or invent fair options that lead to mutual gain; (e) Evaluate and select among the options the one that is viewed as fair and best meets the legitimate needs of the parties involved. 5. Develop methods for dealing with difficult conflicts so that one is not helpless nor hopeless when confronting those who are more powerful or those who use dirty tricks. 6. Know oneself and how one typically responds in different sorts of conflict situations so that one can control habitual tendencies that may be dysfunctional. Training programs and curricula for teaching conflict resolution and violence prevention in the schools have been developed for students in the elementary as

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well as secondary schools. They take various forms depending upon the age groups for which they are used. Most programs employ lectures and videos to teach theory, concepts, and knowledge while role-playing, role-reversal, discussion of real conflicts, and video are employed to teach specific skills.

Mediation There are difficult conflicts which the disputing parties may not be able to resolve constructively without the help of third parties such as mediators. To deal with such conflicts, mediation programs have been established in community dispute resolution centers and in schools. In schools, students as young as 10 years as well as high school and college students and teachers have been trained to serve as mediators. Typically, they are given training for 20 or 30 h in the principles of constructive conflict resolution as well as specific training in how to serve as a mediator. They are usually given a set of rules to apply during the mediation process. Thus, Johnson and Johnson (1991), in summarizing what student mediators are expected to do, write: The procedure for mediation consists of a series of steps. First, you end hostilities. Break up fights and cool down students. Second, you ensure both people are committed to the mediation process. To ensure that both persons are committed to the mediation process and are ready to negotiate in good faith, the mediator introduces the process of mediation, sets the ground rules, and introduces him- or herself. Third, you help the two people negotiate with each other successfully. This includes taking the two persons through the negotiation sequence of (a) jointly defining the conflict by both persons stating what they want and how they feel, (b) exchanging reasons, (c) reversing perspectives so that each person is able to present the other’s position and feelings to the other’s satisfaction, (d) inventing at least three options for mutual benefit, and (e) reaching a wise agreement and shaking hands. Fourth, you formalize the agreement. The agreement is solidified into a contract. Disputants must agree to abide by their final decision and in many ways the mediator becomes “the keeper of the contract” (p. 38).

Although I am a strong proponent of education in this area, I must confess that so far there has been insufficient research on its effectiveness. Additionally, there is much need for basic research on the nature of social skills and effective procedures for education in this area (Deutsch, in press). It appears that to become skilled in constructive conflict resolution and mediation, one needs intensive practice as well as appropriate knowledge and attitudes.

Media Four suggestions with regard to the media are outlined: 1. Reduce the amount of violence that children (and adults) are exposed to on TV. An idea that has been developed in relation to pollution control could be applied to violence control on TV. Give each TV station the right to pollute (i.e., have violent programs) a certain amount per year (e.g., 150 h of TV time per year) and

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allow a market in these rights. A market would make it such that the more highly desired the right to pollute TV time with violence, the more costly it would become. Developing practical procedures for detecting violations of pollution limits and for responding to such violations would require considerable creative effort. 2. For TV programs containing violence, have alternatives made in which the violence episode is replaced by constructive, nonviolent behavior. Develop new TV programs which use the original and alternative version as a basis for the discussion of the alternatives to violence as well as the causes of violence. 3. Present more instances of dramatic constructive conflict resolution which emphasizes the courage, the creativity, skills, and knowledge required. Make heroes of mediators, diplomats, and social problem-solvers. 4. Help support and monitor compliance by public figures (and the media) with the normative framework of constructive conflict resolution. In the recent presidential campaign in the United States, the media played a very important role in identifying and discrediting “dirty tricks” and misleading or false statements by the candidates or their proponents. They could fulfill a similar function in identifying and discrediting destructive conflict tactics (i.e., “what not to do in a conflict”) as well as expressions of prejudice, bias, and discrimination.

Religion Religious fundamentalism, as well as ethnocentrism, appears to be on the rise as a result of the increasing social turmoil, economic distress, and difficult life conditions being experienced by people in many areas of the world. These tendencies rise from understandable psychological needs for self-esteem, security, social identity, and cognitive clarity and simplicity. However, they may lead to moral exclusion, intolerance, and violence toward others who do not belong to their religious-ethnic community. To counter these tendencies, these things could be done: 1. The UN could sponsor a conference of the leaders of the different world religions which is aimed at developing interfaith programs and institutions that would seek to reduce moral exclusion, intolerance, and violence within and among the various religious groups. Hopefully, with the models and help of the parallel UN institutions at the world and regional levels, institutions for interfaith cooperation and conflict resolution would be established to foster interfaith cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, and mediation of religious-ethnic conflicts. 2. The leaders of each religious group, within their own group, in a way similar to that previously described for government leaders, could articulate and implement a normative framework to discourage the moral exclusion of members of other religious groups as well as intolerance and violence toward them. I shall not detail here the many ways of doing this; they parallel those I have described for government leaders.

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Industry In contrast to the fragmenting effects of religious fundamentalism and ethnocentrism, industry (more broadly, economic and environmental activity) is pulling the nations of the world into a tighter web of interdependence. Some constructive efforts are being made to avert trade wars and to reduce and repair the damage being done to our global environment. Despite this, the narrow, self-seeking, competitive orientation of many nations and industries is still producing collective harm economically and environmentally. A zero-sum orientation is common within nations and industries, as well as among them, and it is at the root of many economic and environmental disputes. To the extent that economic cooperation occurs among nations or among business firms, it is too frequently cooperation among a coalition which is against the interest of other coalitions of nations or firms or excludes the interests of the public-at-large. To reduce the possibility that coalitions will be exclusive or competitive, several desirable features of ideal coalitions are described below. 1. The building blocks of large coalitions should be local, and these coalitions should be inclusive and representative of the important relevant interests related to and affected by the local coalition. Thus, the policy making council of a local manufacturing plant should include local representatives of management, the working force, the broader community in which the plant is located, and the next larger coalitions in which the plant coalition is embedded. 2. There would be larger horizontal as well as vertical coalitions. Horizontally, the plant is part of a community which it affects and is affected by; it would be one component of a larger coalition that may compose a community’s policy council. Or it may be one component of a local coalition of industries which, in turn, is a component of the community’s policy council. Vertically, the plant is a component of a larger firm which may have local plants in many different communities. There may be several layers of coalitions—local, regional, national, and international—and the larger coalition at each layer would not only be nested in higher vertical coalitions but also in cross-cutting horizontal coalitions. This dual nesting should help to prevent a parochial, self-seeking orientation at all levels of society. 3. Inevitably, there will be conflicts of all sorts within coalitions and among them. In a manner similar to that previously described for government leaders, leaders of coalitions would need to articulate and support a normative framework which encourages constructive conflict resolution and would need to help to develop the procedures and institutions for mediating conflicts when the participants are unable to resolve without assistance from a third party. The growth of institutions and procedures for the mediation of economic and environmental disputes has been notable within the past decade. However, it may not be at a rate sufficient to cope with the economic and environmental conflicts emerging in an ever more tightly-knit world.

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Management of Destructive, Intractable Conflicts It is a truism that the best way to manage destructive, intractable conflicts is to prevent them. However, it is not reasonable to assume that all such conflicts are preventable. For the foreseeable future, we can expect that evil, irrationality, religious fanaticism, fear, hatred, overwhelming power, basic conflicts of interest, and/or profound misunderstandings will continue to give rise to such conflicts. Our field has given little thought to these problems (for an exception see Kriesberg, Northrup, & Thorson, 1989). I have considered some of the issues related to intractable conflicts in the international area (Deutsch, 1983), and some of my students have done so in the marital and family context (Kressel, 1985; Gephardt, 1993; Herschlag, 1993), but we have only scratched the surface. I venture to express my thoughts in the hope of stimulating some of you to work in this area and do a better job. Let me first say a few words about the extreme cases of conflicts involving evil, irrationality, religious fanaticism, or hatred before discussion of the more typical ones. In such instances, it may be true that no approach to managing the conflict constructively will be successful. However, as I have indicated in a paper, “On Changing the Devil” (Deutsch, 1964), even if you are being threatened by a devil who possesses invulnerable H-bombs, it is more sensible to assume that the devil is corrigible than not. Assuming the devil is incorrigible, whether or not it is, inevitably leads to destructive conflict; if you assume that it is corrigible and it is, constructive possibilities may exist. The devil could be corrigible in one or more of several ways; it could be (1) deterred by making salient the inevitable negative consequences for it of attacking you; (2) reassured that you will not initiate hostile action; (3) helped to recognize that the benefits of a constructive resolution of conflict would be greater than those that could be obtained through destructive action; (4) encouraged to recognize that the assumptions and motives underlying its hostility may no longer be appropriate or may obstruct the realization of its more important objectives; or (5) helped to refocus its attention and energies to more benign areas. In addition, it may be possible to enlist allies or friends of the devil or dissident elements within it to restrain its destructive behavior. Of course, if the devil does not have weapons of mass destruction and you can bring to bear overwhelming power, you may be able to restrain it from engaging in destructive behavior even if it is temporarily or permanently incorrigible. Law enforcement agencies typically have as one of its main functions the restraining of those who seek to engage in destructive behavior. They are successful in doing so when they can amass the overwhelming power necessary to restrain even those who are incorrigibly intent on destructive action. When dealing with perceived devils, particularly at the international level, there is often too much emphasis on deterrence as a means of influencing them to desist from destructive behavior. The retaliatory threat involved in deterrence, unless accompanied by strong reassurance, is often experienced as offensive rather than defensive in intent and this may contribute to a spiral of mutual hostile misunderstanding. Moreover, without the use of methods aimed at changing or redirecting

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the motivations of the “perceived devil,” successful deterrence will only “freeze” the hostile relations and restrain destructive actions only until the deterrence can be outwitted, circumvented, or overcome. Let me conclude this section by quoting an old Jewish proverb: “An insincere peace is better than a sincere war.” An insincere peace with the devil is better than a destructive war, and if the peace lasts long enough, the devil may not be able to survive it.

Negotiating the Non-negotiable Now, I turn to a consideration of a destructive conflict in a young couple who were involved in a bitter conflict over issues which they considered non-negotiable. I use this case for articulating a framework for thinking about negotiating the nonnegotiable. The conflict was damaging their self-esteem, causing much anguish, and was harmful to their children. The couple were involved in what I have elsewhere characterized as a “malignant process” of dealing with their conflicts (Deutsch, 1985, Chapter 17). The malignancy was reflected in the tendency for them to escalate a dispute about almost any specific issue (e.g., a household chore, their child’s bedtime) into a power struggle in which each spouse felt that his or her self-esteem or core identity was at stake. The malignant process resulted in (as well as resulted from) justified mutual suspicion, correctly perceived mutual hostility, a win-lose orientation to their conflicts, a tendency to act toward the other which would lead the other to respond in a way which would confirm one’s worst suspicion of the other, an inability to understand and empathize with the other’s needs and vulnerabilities, and a reluctance—based on stubborn pride, nursed grudge, and fear of humiliation—to initiate or respond to a positive generous action to break out of the escalating vicious cycle in which they were entrapped. Many couples in such conflicts do not seek help: they continue to abuse one another, sometimes violently, or they break up. The couple that I worked with sought help for several reasons. On the one hand, their conflicts were becoming physically violent: this frightened them and it also ran counter to their strongly-held intellectual values regarding violence. On the other hand, there were strong constraints making it difficult for them to separate. They felt they would be considerably worse off economically, their children would suffer, and they had mutually congenial intellectual, esthetic, sexual, and recreational interests which would be difficult for them to engage in together if they separated.

Developing a Readiness to Negotiate Before I turn to a discussion of the negotiation of a non-negotiable issue, let me briefly discuss the steps involved in getting the couple to the point where they were ready to negotiate. There were two major interrelated steps, each of which involved many substeps. The first entailed helping each spouse to recognize that the present

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situation of a bitter, stalemated conflict no longer served his or her real interests. The second step involved aiding the couple to become aware of the possibility that both of them could be better off than they were currently if they recognized that their conflict was a joint problem which required creative, joint efforts in order to improve their individual situations. The two steps do not follow one another in neat order. Progress in either facilitates progress in the other.

Irrational Deterrents to Negotiation There are many reasons why otherwise intelligent and sane individuals may persist in engaging in behaviors which perpetuate a destructive conflict which is harmful to their rational interests. Some of the common ones are: It enables one to blame one’s own inadequacies, difficulties, and problems on the other so that one can avoid confronting the necessity of changing one’s self. Thus, in the couple I treated, the wife perceived herself to be a victim and felt that her failure to achieve her professional goals was due to her husband’s unfair treatment of her as exemplified by his unwillingness to share the responsibilities for the household and child care. Blaming her husband provided her with a means of avoiding her own apprehensions about whether she personally had the abilities and courage to fulfill her aspirations. Similarly, the husband who provoked continuous criticism from his wife for his domineering, imperial behavior employed her criticisms to justify his emotional withdrawal, thus enabling him to avoid dealing with his anxieties about personal intimacy and emotional closeness. Even though the wife’s accusations concerning her husband’s behavior toward her were largely correct, as were the husband’s toward her, each had an investment in maintaining the other’s noxious behavior because of the defensive self-justifications such behavior provided. It enables one to maintain and employ skills, attitudes, roles, resources, and investments that one has developed during the course of one’s history. The wife’s role as “victim” and the husband’s as “unappreciated emperor” had long histories. Each had well-honed skills and attitudes in relation to their respective roles that made their roles very familiar and natural to enact in times of stress. Less familiar roles, in which one’s skills and attitudes are not well-developed, are often avoided because of the fear of attempting the unknown. Analogous to similar social institutions, these personality “institutions” also seek out opportunities for exercise and self-justification and in so doing help to maintain and perpetuate themselves. It enables one to have a sense of excitement, purpose, coherence, and unity which is otherwise lacking in one’s life. Some people feel aimless, dissatisfied, at odds with themselves, bored, unfocused, and unenergetic. Conflict, especially if it has dangerous undertones, can serve to counteract these feelings: it can give a heightened sense of purpose as well as unity and can also be energizing as one mobilizes oneself for the struggle against the other. For depressed people who lack self-esteem, conflict can be an addictive stimulant which is sought out to mask their underlying depression. It enables one to obtain support and approval from interested third parties. Friends and relatives, on each side, may buttress the opposing positions of the

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conflicting parties with moral, material, and ideological support. For the conflicting parties to change their positions and behaviors may entail the dangerous of loss of self-esteem, rejection, and even attack from others who are vitally significant to them. How does a third party help the conflicting parties overcome such deterrents to recognizing that their situation of a bitter, stalemated conflict no longer serves their real interests? The general answer, which is often quite difficult to implement in practice, is to help each of the conflicting parties change in such a way that the conflict no longer is maintained by conditions within the parties which are extrinsic to the conflict. In essence, this entails helping each of the conflicting parties to achieve the self-esteem and self-image which would make them no longer need the destructive conflict process as a defense against their sense of personal inadequacy, their fear of taking on new and unfamiliar roles, their feeling of purposelessness and boredom, and their fears of rejection and attack if they act independently of others. Fortunately, the strength of the irrational factors binding the conflicting parties to a destructive conflict process is often considerably weaker than the motivation arising from the real havoc and distress resulting from the conflict. Emphasis on this reality, if combined with a sense of hope that the situation can be changed for the better, provides a good basis for negotiation.

Conditions That Foster the Recognition of the Conflict as a Joint Problem Requiring Joint Efforts What are the conditions which are likely to help conflicting parties become aware of the possibility that each of them could be better off than they are currently if they recognize that their conflict is a joint problem which requires creative, joint efforts in order to improve the individual situations? A number of such conditions are listed below: 1. Crucial to this awareness is the recognition that one cannot impose a solution of the problem, which is acceptable or satisfactory to oneself, upon the other. In other words, there is recognition that a satisfactory solution for oneself requires the other’s agreement, and this is unlikely unless the other is also satisfied with the solution. Such recognition implies an awareness that a mutually acceptable agreement will require at least a minimum degree of cooperation. 2. To believe that the other is ready to engage in a joint problem-solving effort, one must believe that the other has also recognized that it cannot impose a solution, i.e., it has also recognized that a solution has to be mutually acceptable. 3. The conflicting parties must have some hope that a mutually acceptable agreement can be found. This hope may rest upon their own perception of the outlines of a possible fair settlement or it may be based upon their confidence in the expertise of third parties or even upon a generalized optimism. 4. The conflicting parties must have confidence that if a mutually acceptable agreement is conducted, the other will abide by it or violations will be detected

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before the losses to the self and the gains to the other become intolerable. If the other is viewed as unstable, lacking self-control, or untrustworthy, it will be difficult to have confidence in the viability of an agreement unless one has confidence in third parties who are willing and able to guarantee the integrity of the agreement. The foregoing conditions for establishing a basis for initiating the joint work necessary in serious negotiation are much easier to develop when the conflicting parties are part of a strong community in which there are well developed norms, procedures, professionals, and institutions which encourage and facilitate problemsolving negotiations. This is more apt to be the case in interpersonal conflicts than in conflicts between ethnic groups or nations that do not perceive themselves as members of a common community. When the encouragements to negotiation do not exist as a result of belonging to a common community, the availability of helpful, skilled, prestigious, and powerful third parties who will use their influence to foster problem-solving negotiations between the conflicting parties becomes especially important.

Creating the Conditions for Constructive Negotiation Issues which seem vitally important to a person, such as one’s identity, security, selfesteem, or reputation, often are experienced as being non-negotiable. Thus, consider the husband and wife who viewed themselves in a conflict over a non-negotiable issue. The wife who worked (and wanted to do so) wanted the husband to share equally in the household and child care responsibilities; she considered equality between genders to be one of her core personal values. The husband wanted a traditional marriage with a traditional division of responsibilities in which he would have primary responsibility for income-producing work outside the home, while his wife would have primary responsibility for the work related to the household and child care. The husband considered household work and child care as inconsistent with his deeply rooted image of adult masculinity. The conflict seemed non-negotiable to the couple—for the wife it would be a betrayal of her feminist values to accept her husband’s terms; for the husband, it would be a violation of his sense of adult masculinity to become deeply involved in housework and child care. However, this non-negotiable conflict became negotiable when, with the help of a third party, the husband and wife were enabled to listen to and really understand the other’s feelings and how their respective life experiences had led them to the views they each held. Understanding the other’s position fully and the feelings and experiences which were behind them made them each feel less hurt and humiliated by the other’s position and more ready to seek solutions which would accommodate the interests of both. They realized that with their joint incomes they could afford to pay for household and child care help, which would enable the wife to be considerably less burdened by these responsibilities without increasing the husband’s chores

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in these areas: doing so, of course, lessened the amount of money they had available for other purposes. This solution was not a perfect one for either. The wife and husband, each, would have preferred that the other share her or his own view of what a marriage should be like. However, their deeper understanding of the other’s position made them feel less humiliated and threatened by it and less defensive toward the other. It also enabled them to negotiate a mutually acceptable agreement that lessened the tensions between them, despite their continuing differences in basic perspectives. The general conclusions that I draw from this and other experience with a “nonnegotiable” issue is that most such issues are negotiable even though the underlying basic differences between the conflicting parties may not be reconcilable. The issues become negotiable when the conflicting parties learn to listen, understand, and empathize with the other party’s position, interests, and feelings—providing they are also able to communicate to the other their understanding and empathy. Even though understanding and empathy do not imply agreement with the other’s views, they indicate an openness and responsiveness to the other which reduces hostility and defensiveness and which also allows the other to be more open and responsive. Such understanding and empathy help the conflicting parties to reduce their feelings that their self-esteem, security, or identity will be threatened and endangered by recognizing that the other’s feelings and interests, as well as one’s own, deserve consideration in dealing with the issues in conflict. “Non-negotiable” issues also become negotiable when the conflicting parties can be shown that their vital interests will be protected or enhanced by negotiation. It is helpful for negotiators to learn the difference between “positions” and “interests.” The positions of the conflicting parties may be irreconcilable, but their interests may be concordant. Helping parties in conflict to be fully in touch with their longterm interests may enable them to see beyond their “non-negotiable” positions to their congruent interests. An atmosphere of mutual understanding and empathy fosters the conditions which permit conflicting parties to get beyond their initial rigid, unnegotiable positions to their underlying interests. And the development and deepening of cooperative relations between the conflicting parties enable them to place their conflicts in perspective and to see them as a mutual problem to be resolved or managed cooperatively.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have attempted to articulate a framework that would encourage lively, productive controversy rather than deadly quarrel when conflict occurs. Conflicts can have valuable functions if they take a constructive course. They can stimulate psychological development, creativity, and social change. Unfortunately, in today’s world, too many conflicts are not taking this path. What can we do as professionals in the field of conflict resolution, beyond what we are already doing, to lessen the pervasiveness of destructive conflict?

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Let me stress that whatever else we do, it is important to continue what we have been doing. Through our effective efforts in theoretical analyses, research, and professional practice, we have been developing an important new field of scholarship and practice which has immense social significance. This field is still in its early stages. If it is going to realize its important potential, much continued work of the sort we have been engaged in is needed. However, if we are to make progress toward the utopia which I have sketched in this chapter, we need to become advocates for as well as articulators of the social values, practices, and institutions which foster healthy constructive conflict rather than pathological, destructive conflict. Here I refer to such values as being for “win-win” rather than “win-lose” relations with others; the use of non-violent, noncoercive rather than violent, coercive techniques of persuasion; the moral inclusion rather than exclusion of others who are different; fairness and care for the other as well as oneself; and so on. Similarly, one should be for practices which implement the positive values and against practices which are antagonistic to them. Thus, one would be for practices which would enhance mutual power rather than the inequality of power; reduce the availability of weapons rather than make them easily available; indicate respect for the other and his or her interests rather than seek to devalue, disrespect, or humiliate the other; and so on. Also, one would be an advocate for the development and support of institutions in all areas of social life that would foster the values and practices of healthy conflict resolution. The second part of this chapter is an attempt to illustrate how pervasive these institutions will have to be in order to reflect this kind of cultural change that may be necessary to produce a world characterized by creative conflict. If we are going to diminish the prevalence of destructive conflict, we have to recognize that, as advocates, we will inevitably be engaged in controversy with those who do not recognize the need for social and cultural changes. By following in our own behavior what we advise others to do, hopefully, the controversy would be lively and productive. In conclusion, let me state that I wish that our field could create a magic wand which would enable us to turn ugly, destructive conflicts into beautiful, constructive ones. Unfortunately, I see no hope that we can do so. What we can honestly say is that our field has made a very significant beginning in understanding what the conditions and processes are which give rise to destructive rather than constructive conflict resolution as well as in understanding how education, the creation of new institutions for dispute resolution, and fundamental change in the way we think about conflict can make for a more humane world.

References Brenes-Castro, A. (1991). Seeking the true meaning of peace. San Jose, CA: University for Peace Press. Deutsch, M. (1949). A theory of cooperation and competition. Human Relations, 2, 129–151. Deutsch, M. (1964). On producing change in an adversary. In R. Fisher (Ed.), International conflict and the social sciences: The Craigville papers (pp. 145–160). New York: Basic Books.

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Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1993). Educating for a peaceful world. American Psychologist, 48, 510–517. Deutsch, M. (in press). Constructive conflict resolution: Principles, training, and research. Journal of Social Issues. Deutsch, M., & Brickman, E. (1994). Conflict resolution. Pediatrics in Review, 15, 16–22. Gephardt, M. A. (1993). The escalation of marital conflict. Doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University. Herschlag, J. K. (1993). The characteristics and processes of tractable and intractable conflicts as they occur between spouses in stepfamilies. Doctoral dissertation, Teachers College, Columbia University. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1983). The socialization and achievement crises: Are cooperative learning experiences the answer? In L. Beckman (Ed.), Applied social psychology annual 4 (pp. 119–164). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Johnson, D. W., & Johnson, R. (1991). Teaching children to be peacemakers. Edina, MI: Interaction Book. Kressel, K. (1985). The process of divorce. New York: Basic Books. Kriesberg, L., Northrup, T. A., & Thorson, S. J. (1989). Intractable conflicts and their transformation. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Peck, C. (1993). Preventive diplomacy. In G. Evans (Ed.), Cooperating for peace: The global agenda for the 1990s and beyond (pp. 61–85). St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin. Sharp, G. (1973). The politics of non-violent action (Parts I, II, & III). Boston: Porter-Sargent. Sivard, R. L. (1991). World military and social expenditures 1991. Washington, DC: World Priorities. Sivard, R. L. (1993). World military and social expenditures 1993. Washington, DC: World Priorities.

Chapter 14

A Utopian Proposal for Changing the World Morton Deutsch

I feel deeply honored by the superb chapters written by the distinguished contributors to this book. Each of the contributors hopes that their work will not only contribute to the development of psychological knowledge but, also, that their work will contribute to the development of a more peaceful, humane, sustainable, and just world community. This has been my hope for my work also. My work has been mainly concerned with the development of theory and research in the areas of cooperation-competition, conflict resolution, and social justice (including prejudice). Kurt Lewin, my mentor, postulated that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory”. I still believe in Kurt Lewin’s postulate. The major social value of intellectual work in the behavioral sciences consists in its providing organizational frameworks, clarifying ideas, and systematic concepts for helping those who are engaged in practical work to think about what they do more comprehensively, more analytically, and with more concern for the empirical soundness of their working assumptions. My limited work as a practitioner dealing with conflict, was as a psychoanalyst, working with adults and married couples. I was trained in a psychoanalytic institute and found that my theoretical research work on conflict was very useful in my helping patients learn to manage their conflict more constructively (Deutsch, 1988). It provided a very valuable complement to my psychoanalytic training. Although my work as a practitioner was quite limited, I wrote a number of papers and gave many talks at professional conferences, at workshops with government officials, and at public meetings in which I presented my theoretical ideas as they related to such issues as: the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, preventing World War III, nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, and issues of distributive justice as well as a number of articles concerned with education. Many of these articles are available on the ICCCR website (www.tc.edu/icccr). Some are in my books: The Prevention of World War III, (1962 edited with Q. Wright and W. M. Evan), The Resolution of Conflict (1973), and Distributive Justice (1985) both published by Yale University Press. M. Deutsch (B) Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] 309 P.T. Coleman (ed.), Conflict, Interdependence, and Justice, Peace Psychology Book C Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 Series, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-9994-8_14, 

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Some Practical Effects of Theory My theoretical work has stimulated others to develop some of the practical implications of my work. Thus, as indicated in the chapter on cooperation-competition, my theoretical work in this area contributed to the development of cooperative learning in many schools in the United States and throughout the world. This was done under the leadership of David and Roger Johnson. It also has been employed by many consultants who seek to improve organizational functioning. My work on prejudice (Deutsch & Collins, 1951) has helped to stimulate the desegregation of public housing and played a small role in the Brown vs. Board of Education decision that desegregated public schools. My work on conflict resolution, with the help of many former students and many other scholars, helped to stimulate the development of the field of conflict resolution studies. The basic query underlying our theoretical and research work on conflict (“What determines whether a conflict will take a constructive or destructive course?”) has direct relevance to conflicts in the world. Many of my former students have applied our theoretical work on conflict to such diverse conflicts as marital conflict, intergroup and ethnic conflict, industrial conflict, educational conflict, international conflict, reconciliation after destructive conflict, and so on. The applications have taken various forms; analytical writing, education, workshops with practitioners, mediation, and consultation to the conflicting parties. Such students as Jeffrey Rubin, Roy Lewicki, David Johnson, Michelle Fine, Harvey Hornstein, Madelaine Heilman, Barbara Bunker, Kenneth Kressel, Susan Opotow, Janice Steil, Peter Coleman, Eric Marcus, Ken Sole, Adrienne Asch, and many others have made important, original contributions to the development of practice as well as theory in this area. In addition, the Center that I founded at Teachers College, the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), now headed by Peter Coleman, has helped to stimulate the development of conflict resolution and mediation programs in many schools. For me, one of the applications of my work is an unusually important one. It occurred in Poland where two outstanding psychologists, Janusz Reykowski and Janusz Grzelak, applied some of my ideas during the negotiations between the Communist Government and Solidarity which lead to a peaceful transfer of governmental power from the Communist Party to Solidarity in 1989. Reykowski was a leading figure in the Communist Party and Grzelak was a very important influence in the Solidarity movement. Each has indicated that my work influenced him considerably in their approach to the negotiations which facilitated a constructive resolution of the negotiations (See Deutsch in press). Some of my writings in the area of social justice have had considerable impact on the social psychological study of justice, but I am not aware of its practical effects apart from the work of Michelle Fine and her students. Her development of participatory action research so that it can change the psychological orientations of the privileged and powerful as well as empowering those who are disadvantaged is an important advancement of practice.

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A Utopian Proposal for Changing the World The people on our planet must confront serious, difficult problems if civilized, human life is to survive without devastating conflicts. These problems include: the existence of weapons of mass destruction; climate change; development of an effective, global economic system; the future shortage of some basic resources such as water, oil, and the minerals used in the technology and industry that are part of a productive economy. The problems that the people on our planet will face in this century have been well described elsewhere. Here, I want to make the point that these problems are unlikely to be solved unless there is the development of the values, knowledge, and skills related to effective cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, the widespread improvement of social justice, and continued striving to fulfill the ideals expressed in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. However, I think that the fulfillment of these objectives will require the development of the awareness that we all are members of a world community who have common interests and common ancestry and who, ultimately, will “sink or swim together.” I believe we (social science and education) now have sufficient knowledge to develop fairly good curricula and pedagogy for educating diverse populations of people (in different nations and cultures), in schools and out of schools in informative and interesting ways relevant to the concerns of this book. These include: 1) Development of a personal identity as a global citizen which includes the awareness of being a member of a world community that faces critical problems which can only be solved or managed by effective cooperation among the members of this community: a community which treats all of its people with equal dignity and seeks to implement The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948. 2) Development of effective cooperation and cooperative learning 3) Development of constructive conflict resolution and reconciliation after destructive conflict 4) Increasing social Justice a) Awakening the sense of injustice in the privileged and powerful b) Empowering the disadvantaged In my chapter, Constructive Conflict Management for the World Today, I have indicated what different institutions could do to facilitate the constructive management of conflict. I believe it is very important to involve these organizations and others in efforts to make our planet more humane, peaceful, and sustainable. However, I also believe that through modern technology, many of the world’s people can be directly addressed and involved in producing the change. Changes from “below” as well as from the “top” will be necessary.

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I do not have the knowledge or skills to propose how funds could be raised for this utopian proposal nor do I have the knowledge to suggest implementation strategies nor to help in the development of the appropriate educational pedagogy and curricula in the various contexts in which implementation would occur. However, I do have several suggestions. (1) I consider the development of the identity of being a member of the world community to be a prerequisite for the development of global cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, and social justice. Without the development of the sense that we all are members of a global community in which we “sink or swim together,” it would be impossible to develop the cooperation, constructive conflict resolution, and social justice necessary to handle successfully the difficult global problems that we face. I also believe that one’s identity as a global citizen should include a commitment to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, just as a citizen of the United States should be committed to the U.S. Constitution. (2) It seems clear to me that the organization which is created to develop and implement the proposal, which is barely outlined here, must be multifaceted. In addition to key social scientists and social practitioners who have developed relevant theory, research, and practice, it would also be desirable to include experts who are knowledgeable about educational practice and educational changes in different populations and cultures; experts in organizational and social change; communication experts who are skilled in the use of such technology as the Internet and mobile phones (as well as others that I don’t know) for reaching great numbers of people throughout the world; and experts in the media such as TV, the radio, the movies, and games, so that the communications employ interesting and involving educational experiences. Additionally, anthropologists who have knowledge about the values and sensitivities of different cultures could help to ensure that the communications and materials employed are culturally appropriate. (3) It is important that research be a central component of the proposal. Research is needed to identify what is having the desired effects and what is not. Much of the research could take the form of the Participatory Action Research (PAR) described in the chapter by Brett Stoudt, Maddy Fox, and Michelle Fine. (4) Implementation of this large scale, costly proposal which is sketched out here is, I realize, unlikely to occur. Possibly, the first component might be undertaken. For any thing to be done with this proposal, I suspect a small interested group, at a university or the UN, must meet to develop a much more detailed and specific proposal (with a budget) that could be submitted to possible sources of funding. Possibly, some interested people could be found at some of the relevant institutes and centers at Columbia University. I do not expect implementation to occur except in small steps. This is a “social psychological” proposal and I hope we will be able to help the world take a small stop towards its implementation. However, for its greater realization it will require many people in different academic disciplines as well as many in government, business, education, the media, religion, health, and other institutions to develop the values, theories, knowledge, skills, procedures, and resources which enable sustained progress toward its realization.

14

A Utopian Proposal for Changing the World

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The proposal outlined here is based on a vision: • in which the people and groups of our planet would perceive themselves as being members of a world community; in which they, as well as the other members of this community, equally deserve and feel that they will be treated fairly as well as with dignity and respect; • in which their world community would recognize that it is faced with critical problems that only can be solved through creative cooperation by its members; • in which they realize that conflicts about how to solve these problems, as well as others, that will inevitably arise, if approached cooperatively, are likely to give rise to constructive conflict resolution and produce solutions which are beneficial to all; • and, finally, in which they realize that some conflicts within their community may take a destructive course and end up badly, but they value, encourage and practice reconciliation so that embittered relations can be replaced by fair, cooperative relations. Whether or not this utopian vision is implemented, in any manner, I believe it is important to have a vision of the possibility of a more humane, peaceful, and sustainable world. Such a vision can help guide our work as a theorist or practitioner, as well as a citizen.

References Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict: Constructive and destructive processes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1985). Distributive justice: A social psychological perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Deutsch, M. (1988). On negotiating the non-negotiable. In B. Kellerman & J. Rubin (Eds.), Leadership and negotiation in the Middle East (pp. 248–263), New York: Praeger. Deutsch, M. (in press). A theory of cooperation-competition and beyond. In P. Van Lange, A. Kruglanski, & T. Higgins (Eds.). Handbook of theories in social psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Deutsch, M., & Collins, M. E. (1951). Interaction housing: A psychological evaluation of a social experiment. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Wright, O., Evan, W. M., & Deutsch, M. (Eds.). (1962). Preventing World War III: Some proposals. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Index

Note: Page numbers with ‘f’ and ‘t’ in the index denote figures and tables in the text. A Abelson, R. P., 255 Absolute deprivation, 151, 209 Acme-Bolt Trucking game, 9–10, 12, 215–216 Adaptation, 122, 137, 273 Adorno, T. W., 2, 7, 150 Affiliation, 194, 239, 257, 262 African National Congress (ANC), 219, 221 Aggression, 83, 107, 150, 171, 258, 260 Alexander, M. G., 277 Alinsky, S. D., 157–158, 219–220 Allport, G. W., 7, 137, 273 American Civil War, 126, 130 Anderson, S., 165 Antagonism, 221, 251 Anti-social behavior, 179 Apology, 34, 102, 114 Arab-Israeli conflict, 309 Archer-Kath, J., 55 Asymmetries, 25, 100, 105, 130, 147, 201 Atkinson, J. W., 262 Attribution biases, 230 external, 235 success and failure, 48 system-threatening, 235 theory, 43 Aumer-Ryan, K., 132 The Authoritarian Personality (Adorno et al.), 7 Autistic hostility, 27–28 Autocratic authority, 150 Autogenocide, 200 Awakening, 165–166 democratic science for, 166–169 projects, social psychology of, 169

sense of injustice, victims and victimizers, 100–101, 186 See also Injustice, awakening in 21st century; Oppression; Sense of injustice Awakenings (Deutsch), 170 Ayala, J., 167 B Bakhtin, M., 139 Bales, R. F., 150, 249 Banaji, M. R., 124, 230 Banton, M., 261 Bargaining power, 102, 153, 155–156, 160, 168, 210, 212–213, 224 Bartkowski, W., 284 Bartlett, F. C., 254 Basoglu, M., 113 Bateson, G., 255 Benne, K. D., 249 Berdahl, J., 278, 283 Berscheid, E., 122, 132 Biernat, M., 137 Bjork, R., 57 Blackman, J., 120, 134 Blader, S., 50 Boeckman, R. J., 96, 196 Boler, M., 176, 183 Boll, T., 230 Borris, E. R., 112, 114 Boulding, K. E., 277 Bourdieu, P., 120, 169 Bram, S. J., 116 Brehm, J., 43 Brenes-Castro, A., 292 Brewer, M. B., 277 Brickman, E., 295

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316 Brown vs. Board of Education, 8, 310 Bui-Wrzosinska, L., 277 Bullying expression of culture, 171 institutional/interpersonal levels, 171 pervasiveness of, 174 toxic effects of, 133 verbal/physical, 170 Bunker, B., 12, 310 Burton, J. W., 115 Buss, D. M., 134 Byers, E. S., 132 C Callan, E., 176 Cammarota, J., 167 Campbell, D., 44 Campbell, J., 58 Cantril, H., 134, 138 Cartwright, D. P., 5, 248 Cathexis, 42, 256 Center for the Study of Boys’ and Girls’ Lives (CSBGL), 170 Chaiken, S. L., 214 Christopher, K. P., 227 Chung, C., 277 City College of New York (CCNY), 1–3, 18 Civilized oppression, 171–172 denaturalizing, 172 documenting within and beyond privilege, 170 Civil Rights Movement, 130, 223, 237 Clark, H., 3, 55 Clark, R. A., 262 Cognitive orientations, interdependence, 257 Cohen, Morris Raphael, 1, 3 Cold War, 13–14, 309 Coleman, J., 49 Coleman, P. T., 12, 16, 18, 50, 65–90, 197, 199, 273–286, 310 Collins, M. E., 7–8, 126, 135, 205, 310 Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress, 4 Comparing oneself to others, 154, 211–212 Compensation, 33, 102, 114 Competition and Cooperation (May & Doob), 45 Competitive contests, 29, 250 Conceptual Representation and Measurement of Psychological Forces (Lewin), 2 Confession, 102, 114 Conflict and justice, see Justice and conflict Conflict dynamics in social relations, 277–282

Index aims of psychological orientations and, 274 degree of total goal interdependence— relational importance, 277 3-D model, empirical support for, 280–282 adaptive orientations to conflict, 281 appeasement scenarios, 281 autonomy scenarios, 281 conflict orientations for relationship, 282 dominance scenarios/orientations, 281 support scenarios, 281 task-oriented vs. social-emotional relations, 281 3-D model, overview of, 278–280 conflict orientations, 282 conflict stimulus field, 280f regions of stimulus field, 279 integrative framework, 277f mixture of goal interdependence, 277 relative distribution of power, 278 Conflict resolution, 32–36 norms, 33–35 reframing, 32–33 skills, 36–38 training, 38–40 values, 35–36 win-win orientation, 32 Confrontations, 157, 213, 281 Consciousness-raising tactics, 157, 213, 240 Constructive behaviors, 279, 292 Constructive conflict management destructive conflict management of, 300–301 prevention of, 291–292 See also Destructive conflict factors affecting course of conflict, 290–291 cooperative/competitive social processes, effects, 290 destructive conflict process, competitive orientation, 290–291 “Deutsch’s crude law of social relations”, 290 governance, see Constructive conflict management, governance negotiation conditions for constructive, 304–305 irrational deterrents to, 302–303 with non-negotiable, 301 readiness, interrelated steps, 301–302 third parties, 304 recognition of conflict as joint problem, 303–304

Index Constructive conflict management, governance, 289 education, 289 “not to do” list, 295 “to do” list, 296 industry, features of ideal coalitions, 299 media, suggestions for, 297–298 mediation, programs in schools/centers, 297 religion, suggestions to counter intolerance, 298 United Nations, 292–294 Balkan Institute for Dispute Resolution, 293 functions, 293 political leaders and military power, 292–293 regional Institutes for Conflict Resolution and Mediation, functions, 293 United States, 294–295 dearth of well-developed institutions, 294 role of President and leaders, 294 Constructive conflict resolution values fallibility, 35–36 human equality, 35 nonviolence, 36 reciprocity, 35 shared community, 35 Constructive controversy, 29, 45 Consumption capital, 196–197 Contact zones, 165, 178, 188 Contrition, 102, 114 Cook, S. W., 7–8, 19 Cooperation and competition, 23 cognitive orientation, 257 conflict resolution, 32–36 norms, 33–35 reframing, 32–33 skills, 36–38 training, 38–40 values, 35–36 win-win orientation, 32 constructive vs. destructive competition, 29–30 effects of, 26–27 escalating conflict, 27–28 nature of processes, 28–29 positive/negative characteristics, 26–28 initiation of, 30–31 Crude Law of Social Relations, 30–31 moral orientation, 258

317 motivational orientation, 259 theory of, 24–26 asymmetries, 25 attitudes, 25 interdependence and action, types of, 24–25 social psychological processes, 25–26 substitutability, 25 training, 38–40 content, 39 learning/application, 38–39 reflective practitioner, 39–40 Cooperation and Competition Among Primitive Peoples (Mead), 45 Cooperation and Competition: An Experimental Study in Motivation (Maller), 45 Cooperative conflict resolution skills, 36–37 Cooperative learning, 45–47 cooperative base groups, 46–47 formal, 45–46 informal, 46 outcomes of, 52f Cooperative management, 195 Cooperative orientation, 23, 32–33, 38, 125, 266–267, 279, 290 Cooperative ownership, 195 Cooperative relations, principles, 114–115 curbing extremism, 115 fair rules for managing conflict, 115 humanization of the other, 115 mutual security/respect, 115 mutual trust/cooperation, 115 Counteraction, 258 Counter-hegemony, 175–176 Covington, M., 50 Crandall, C. S., 239 Crosby, F. J., 137–138, 151, 209, 229 Crude Law of Social Relations (Deutsch), 30–31, 42, 125, 228, 275, 284, 290–291 Cudd, A. E., 171 Cultural imperialism, 96, 106, 196, 200–201, 209 Cunningham, W. A., 124 Curhan, J. R., 282 D Dambrun, M., 234 Dansereau, D., 57 Darwin, C., 273 Davies, J. C., 154, 211 DeBruin, E. M. N., 277

318 Deising, P., 282 DeLamater, J., 133 Denaturalization, 120, 138, 172, 179, 183 Denial of personal discrimination, 137 Depret, E. F., 278 Deservingness, 131–132, 135 Destructive conflict management of, 300–301 corrigibility, 300 extreme cases, 300 law enforcement agencies, 300 retaliatory threat, 300 prevention of, 291–292 death among youth, 292 institutions, functions of, 292 World War II, 291 Deutsch, M., 1–20, 23–45, 47, 49–51, 59–60, 95–117, 119–120, 122–127, 130–131, 135, 138, 147–163, 193–224, 227–231, 235–237, 240–241, 247–269, 274–277, 279, 282–284, 289–306, 309–313 career autobiography, 1–3 at Bell Labs, 9–11 dissertation study, 6–7 at ICCCR, 16–18 at Research Center for Human Relations, 7–9 as social psychologist, 4–6 at Teachers College, 11–16 Dewey, J., 58 Diener, E., 207 Diesing, P., 195, 263 Disagreements, 33, 35 Discontent, 99, 151, 154–157, 168, 203, 209, 211–213, 242 Dissonance theory, 10, 19, 43 Distributive injustice in oppression, 196–198 consumption capital, 196–197 investment capital, 197 skill capital, 197 social capital, 197 Distributive justice, 6, 13–15, 19, 97–99, 120–121, 123–125, 128, 131–136, 140, 194–195, 197, 266, 284, 309 Distributive Justice (Deutsch), 15, 197, 309 Doob, L., 45, 49 Drive reduction theory (Hull), 43 Druckman, D., 57 Dubé, L., 234 Du Bois, W. E. B., 168, 184

Index Dyadic relationships, basic dimensions, 122, 274 Dynamic Theory of Personality (Lewin), 2 Dyrenforth, P. S., 235 E Eagly, A. H., 235 Edelman, P., 153, 210 Egalitarianism, 150, 194–195, 240, 258 Egoistical deprivation, 98, 151, 209 Eichmann, Adolf, 114 Elitism, 173–174 Embarrassment, 158, 220 Emotions positive/negative, 34–35, 37, 100, 104 and social relationship, 252–253, 266, 284, 290 Empathy, 111–112, 175–176, 183, 188, 268, 280, 305 levels/interrelated methods, 112 England, K., 227 Entitlement, 35, 99, 120, 128, 136, 153, 155, 168, 173, 209–210, 212, 230–232, 256 Equality, 13, 16, 35, 50, 81–82, 97–98, 107, 120, 125, 127, 130, 132, 234–235, 251, 258, 284, 304 Equity, 13, 19, 50, 97–98, 120, 125, 131–132, 159, 195, 266–269 Ethnocentrism, 103, 296, 298–299 Evan, W. M., 7, 10, 309 Extremism, 115 F Fairchild, K., 232, 235 Favoritism, 229, 232 Fear, 34, 100–101, 113, 159–160, 166, 168, 183, 207–208, 217, 222, 231, 242, 281, 300–303 Feather, N. T., 262 Female inferiority, 204 Ferring, D., 230 Festinger, L., 5–6, 11, 43, 75, 155, 212, 273 Feygina, I., 236–237 Field theory, 2, 43, 123, 138, 140 Filipp, S., 230 Fine, M., 12, 119, 131, 133, 135, 165–190, 228–229, 310, 312 Fiske, S. T., 122, 277–278, 283 Flipping coins, 23, 116 Foa, E. B., 113, 123, 125, 128, 131, 136, 141 Foa, U. G., 125, 128, 131, 136, 141

Index Forgiveness and reconciliation agreement for, 114 approaches to, 113 cooperative relations, 114–115 definition of, 112–113 PTSD, role in relieving, 113–114 Formal vs. informal interdependence, 247 cognitive orientation, 254–256 moral orientation, 256–257 motivational orientation, 257 Foster, C., 277 Fox, J., 188 Fox, M., 165–190, 312 Fraternal deprivation, 98, 151–152, 209, 229 Frenkel-Brunswik, E., 2, 7 Freud, A., 101, 140, 168, 206, 209, 229, 261, 276 Friedman, M. J., 113 Friesen, J., 239 Frost, D. M., 120, 133 Frustrations, 17, 23, 110, 200, 206, 262 Fry, D. P., 195 G Gagnon, D., 137, 232 Galinsky, A. D., 281 Galtung, J., 211 Garland, D., 130 Gaucher, D., 227–242 Gender and sexuality, 111, 120, 132, 135, 173, 179, 186, 294 Gender entitlements, 153, 210 Genocide/mass killing, 125, 129, 200 Gephardt, M. A., 300 Gestalt psychology(ists), 3, 15, 44, 120 Gilbert, D. T., 122 Gil, D. G., 195 Glick, P., 235 Goffman, E. F., 255 Goldsmith, R. E., 236 Gruenfeld, D. H., 214 Grzelak, J. L., 310 Guided imagination, empathy method, 112 Guilt, 100, 113, 140, 148, 148, 150, 206–207, 216, 231 Guimond, S., 234 Gurr, T. R., 104, 155, 212, 229–230 H Hafer, C. L., 128 Hage, J., 248–249 Hagiwara, N., 235

319 The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice (Deutsch), 16, 18, 125 Handicapped/nonhandicapped participants, 47, 53, 56, 59, 97 Hannafin, M., 55 Hardin, C. D., 231 Harvey, D., 170, 195 Harvey, J., 95, 170, 187, 203 Hatfield, E., 132 Haves/havenots, 151, 157–159, 219–220 Head, Sir Henry., 254 Hegtvedt, K. A., 125 Heider, F., 15, 43 Herek, G. M., 132–133 Hermann, R. K., 277 Herschlag, J. K., 300 Hertzman, Max, 1, 18 Himmelstrand, V., 211 Hinduism, 204 Holland, J. H., 137 Holmes, R. L., 222 Holocaust, 129–130, 135, 140 Holubec, E., 45–47, 58 Hooper, S., 55 Howard, A., 8 Howell, S., 195 Hull, C. L., 3, 43 Hunyady, O., 230, 235 Huo, Y. J., 96, 196 I Ideologies and myths, influence of, 153, 159–160, 168, 210, 229 Impett, E. A., 132 Incarceration, 102, 114, 186 Incentives, positive/negative, 157, 293 Inclusion, 47, 59, 103, 126–127, 129–130, 134, 140, 166, 199, 209, 282, 306 India, Economic Development, and Social Opportunity (Sen), 196 Individual-environmental fit and adaptation (Darwin), 273 Indoctrination, 100, 148, 153, 202–203, 208, 210 Inducibility, 24–26, 30, 42 Infavoidance, 258 Injustice, awakening in 21st century, 165–166, 186–188 awakening elites and “bystanders” from slumber of complacency, 169 democratic science for awakening, 166–169 dialectics of oppression, 168

320 Injustice, awakening in 21st century (cont.) differential sensitivity to injustice, 167 PAR projects, 167 relative deprivation, 168 social change, warning, 168–169 SPSSI, 166–167 values of, 167 social psychology of “awakening” projects Polling for Justice (PFJ), 178–186 Rockford Bullying Study, 169 Injustice, differential sensitivity to, 100, 147–163, 167, 208 Institutionalized racism, 160 Interdependence psychological orientations, 247–269 nature of, 254–247 and social relations, relation between, 252–254 relevant research actual/ideal social relations, 269 cooperative processes, 266 equality system, 268 equity system, 268 Judd’s research, 267 winner-take-all system, 267 types of, 247–248 See also Interdependence types and orientations, relationship Interdependence types and orientations, relationship cooperation-competition, 248 cognitive orientation, 254 moral orientation, 256 motivational orientation, 256–261 formal vs. informal, 249 cognitive orientation, 254–256 moral orientation, 263–264 motivational orientation, 262 intensity or importance, 249 power, equality vs. inequality cognitive orientation, 254 moral orientation, 256–257 motivational orientation, 259–260 task-oriented vs. social-emotional, 248–249, 250t cognitive orientation, 261–262 moral orientation, 263 motivational orientation, 262–263 International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (ICCCR), 14, 16, 310

Index Interpersonal relations, 28, 48, 51, 107, 248–249, 251, 256, 264, 269, 274, 282 Interracial Housing: A Psychological Evaluation of a Social Experiment (Deutsch & Collins), 8, 126 Intimacy, 130, 136, 140 fairness, resource distribution, 123 body, concept of, 133, 135 “normalization” of family dynamics, 132 relationships, 121, 130–131, 133, 135 sexual expectations/satisfaction, 133–134 definition, 134 intimate justice framework, 135 sexism/heterosexism, 133 socially produced process, 135 socio-political conditions, 136 studies on, 137–138 Investment capital, 197 Isaacs, S. L., 227 Islam, 204 J Jahoda, M., 8 Jim Crow period, 130 Jimenez, M. C., 236 Johnson, D. W., 7, 12, 17, 24, 28, 41–61, 273, 290, 297, 310 Johnson, F., 50 Johnson, R. T., 7, 16, 24, 28, 41–61, 273, 290, 297, 310 Joireman, J. A., 277 Jost, J. T., 227–242 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 273 Journal of Social Issues, 13, 166–167 Judd, C. M., 12, 214, 266–267 Justice and conflict, 95 conflict, implications for, 106–109 conflict about what is just, 108 injustice as source of conflict, 106–107 injustice in course of conflict, 107–108 “justifying” as negotiation tactic, 109 cultural imperialism, 106 distributive justice, 97–99 injustice, types of, 96 procedural justice, 99 retributive and reparative justice, 102–103 scope of justice, 103–106 sense of injustice, 100–102 training, implications for, 109–116 empathic concern, 111

Index examples, types of injustice, 96 forgiveness and reconciliation, 112–115 inventing alternative solutions, 116 scope of justice, 103 systematic forms of injustice, knowledge of, 109–110 Justice research theory, macro and micro spheres, 119–141 analysis, levels of, 124 macro/micro/meso, 124 Pettigrew’s model, 114 singular/multiple, 124 Deutsch: social roles/regulation/inequality, 125 distributive and procedural justice, relationship between, 125 distributive justice, definition, 125 domestic sphere, 126 forms of injustice, 125 interracial housing, 126 implications, 136–141 Lewin: how individuals/groups come to view their world, 121–123 inter-personal/intergroup relationships, 122 Jewish children in Germany (early 20th century), 121 McClelland: intimacy, 131–136 expectations, role of, 132–136 fair resource distribution, 125 Opotow: social conditions of injustice, 127–130 definition, 125 dimensions, exclusion from, 128–129 fostering others’ well-being, 129 German museums, focus on, 129 information distribution, 129 Jim Crow period, 130 resource distribution, 123 K Kahneman, D., 207 Kaiser, C. R., 235–236 Kakuyama, T., 55 Kaplan, S. J., 15, 248–249, 251, 274–275 Karau, S. J., 235 Katz, C., 183 Kay, A. C., 228–230, 232–236, 238–239 Keane, T. M., 113 Kelley, H. H., 248–249, 275, 277–279 Kelman, H. C., 13, 115

321 Kemp, G., 195 Kessel, K., 47 Kiefer, A. K., 132 Kleiber, L., 129 Koffka, K., 44 Krasner, D., 184 Krauss, R., 10, 138, 151 Krech, D., 124, 166 Kressel, K., 12, 122, 300, 310 Kriesberg, L., 300 Krueglar, C., 223 Kruglanski, A. W., 232 Kugler, K., 277, 279–282 Kuriloff, P., 165 L L’Ancien Regime (Tocqueville), 154, 211 Lane, R. E., 207, 231 Lazare, A., 114 Ledgerwood, A., 231, 238 Left-wing authoritarian personality, 150–151 Lerner, M. J., 13, 159, 234 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Questioning (LGBQ), 179, 181, 181f, 183 Level of aspiration theory (Lewin), 139, 151 Levine, K., 197 Levinger, G. B., 120 Levinson, D. J., 7 Lewicki, R., 12, 276, 310 Lewin, K., 1–7, 11, 13, 15–16, 18–20, 32, 41, 43–44, 60, 119–124, 126–127, 129–131, 135–140, 167–168, 173, 184, 228, 254, 273–274, 309 Lewin’s [Bf(P x E)] formula, 276 Lichtenberg, P., 207, 216 Life space, 121, 123, 254 Likert scale, 134 Lind, E. A., 99, 198 Lindzey, G., 122 Lippitt, R., 5, 11, 138, 166 Litterer, J. A., 276 Liviatan, I., 233–235 Lorenz, K., 49 Lowell, E. L., 262 M Madsen, M., 49 Magee, J. C., 281 Major, B., 137, 229–230, 232 Maller, J., 45 Mandela, N., 218–219, 221 Mandisodza, A. N., 227, 238 Marcus, E. C., 18, 310

322 Marginalization, 104, 130, 135, 166–167, 169, 184, 186, 188, 200, 205, 227, 235 Martin, L. L., 13, 184, 237, 240 Maruyama, G., 51 Marwell, G., 248–249 Marxism, 2 Masochism, 5, 148, 150, 207 Mason, J., 230 Matross, R., 47 Matsui, T., 55 May, M., 45, 49 McAdams, D. P., 120 McCarthy, R. M., 9, 223 McClelland, D. C., 262 McClelland, S. I., 119–141 McFarlin, D. B., 137, 232 McKinley, J., 133 Mead, G., 6 Mead, M., 41, 45, 49, 140, 195 Meritocratic ideology, 6, 14, 232, 238 Merton, R. K., 50, 151, 249, 264 Meyer, I. H., 133 Michaels, J., 49 Miller, C. T., 237 Minow, M., 113 Minton, J. W., 276 Mischel, W., 273, 279 Mitchinson, A., 277, 281 Moral exclusion, 96, 104, 110, 128–129, 135, 140, 196, 199–200, 298 Moral orientations, 15, 247, 254, 256–258, 260–261, 263–265, 269, 275–276 Morawski, J. G., 127 Moscovici, S., 2 Motivational orientations, 254, 256–260, 262–264 Multi-generational collaborations, 127, 130, 139, 178–179, 183–184 Murray, H. A., 5, 10–11, 257–260, 262, 264 Mutual reinforcement, 28, 156, 213 N Nadler, A., 114 National Socialist Party (Nazi), 120, 129 Naturalization, 120, 122, 126–127, 177 Nazism, 1, 7, 19 Neckerman, K. M., 193 Negotiation conditions for constructive, 304–305 helping parties in conflict, 305 irrational deterrents to, 302–303 with non-negotiable, 301

Index “malignant process”, 301 seeking help, 301 readiness, interrelated steps, 301–302 third parties, 302 Neisser, U., 252 Nelson, D., 51 Noel, L., 204 Nonviolence constructive conflict resolution values, 36 methods, 222–223, 241 categories, 222–224 hypothesis, 223 training, 223 power strategies, overcoming oppression, 214, 218 Northrup, T. A., 300 Nosek, B. A., 230, 239 Nowak, A., 273–286 Nuclear weapons, 6, 309 Nussbaum, M. C., 131, 135, 137–138 O Ochberg, F., 113 Oedipal complex, 51 Official ideologies, weakening of, 153, 210–211 Onglatco, M., 55 Opotow, S. V., 12, 104, 119–141, 200, 310 Oppositional interaction, 54, 56 Oppression, 195–196 awakening sense of injustice, 208–213 bargaining power, 212–213 comparing oneself to others, 211–212 conditions that awaken/intensify, 209–210 differential sensitivity of victim/victimizer, 208–209 ideology and myths, 210–211 satisfactions-dissatisfactions, experiences, 211 civilized, 195 dialectics of, 168 distributive injustice in, 196–198 consumption capital, 196–197 investment capital, 197 skill capital, 197 social capital, 197–198 forms of, 194 cultural imperialism, 200–201 distributive injustice, 196–198 moral exclusion, 199–200 procedural injustice, 198–199 retributive injustice, 199

Index maintenance of, 201–208 control of the state, 202–203 interactive power, 203–204 legitimation, 204–205 oppressed/oppressor, relationship between, 206–208 self-fulfilling prophecies, 205 socialization and indoctrination, 203 superior power of oppressor, 201–202 systematic terror, 202 Mandela’s resistance to, 218–219 nature of, 193 persuasion strategies, overcoming, 214–224 appeals to moral values, 214 appeals to self-interest/self-realization, 215–216 difficulties in, 217 power strategies, overcoming acquisition of allies, 219 enhancing one’s own/group power, 218 oppressor vs. oppressed, 219–220 violence/nonviolence, 221–224 weakening oppressor’s power, 220 values underlying the term, 193–195 Oppressor(s) identification with, 206 and oppressed overcoming power strategies, 218 relationship between, 206–208 superior power of, 201–202 weakening power of, 220 Otten, W., 277 Ouellette, S. C., 120 P Participatory action research (PAR), 119, 122, 165–167, 169, 171–178, 184, 187–188, 310, 312 Peach, J. M., 238 Peck, C., 293 Pelham, B. W., 231–232 Peplau, L. A., 122, 132 Perrucci, R., 196–197, 203 Personal qualities, 156, 212–213, 261 Persuasion strategies, 214 appeals to moral values, 214 appeals to self-interest/self-realization, 215–216 difficulties in, 217 See also Oppression Pettigrew, T. F., 124, 154, 212 Pettigrew’s model, 124

323 Petty, R. E., 214 Phillips, R., 227 Piaget, J., 41, 49, 204–205 Pickett, K., 186 Pohl, M. J., 238 Policy-planning network, 203 Political animal view (Aristotle), 273 Polling for Justice (PFJ), 178–186 areas of inquiry/process, 178–179 awakening sense of injustice/denaturalizing evidence, 179–180, 180f, 181f circuits of dispossession/advantage, 180–182, 182f injustice/responsibility, collective sense, 182–186 PAR project, 178 Positive interdependence, 54–55 promotive interaction, 56 responsibility forces, 55 Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD), 113–114 Power, equality vs. inequality, 259–261 cognitive orientation, 259 moral orientation, 260–261 motivational orientation, 259–260 Power strategies acquisition of allies, 219 enhancing one’s own/group power, 218 oppressor vs. oppressed, 219–220 violence/nonviolence, 221–224 weakening oppressor’s power, 221 See also Oppression Powers, T. S., 223 Pratto, F., 202, 205, 227 Preacher, K. J., 124 Preference deformation, 137 Prejudice, 4, 7, 9, 19, 48, 58, 101, 111, 120–121, 130, 138, 160, 292, 294–295, 298, 309–310 PreventingWorldWar III (Wright et al.), 10, 13, 309 Principles of Topological Psychology (Lewin), 2 Prisoner’s Dilemma (PD), 8, 13 Procedural injustice, 96, 100, 110, 128, 196, 198–199 Promotive interaction, 42, 54, 56–57, 59 Psychodynamics, 9, 51, 207–208 Psychological health, 28, 48, 51, 53–54, 57 Psychological orientation (PO) and interdependence nature of, 254–257 cognitive orientations, 254–256

324 Psychological orientation (PO) (cont.) moral orientations, 256–257 motivational orientations, 256 PO, definition, 275 and social relations, 252–254 circular relation of individual, comments, 252–254, 253f conception of perceptual cycle, 252 See also Interdependence PTSD, see Posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD) Punishment, 102–103, 110, 112–113, 133, 199, 203, 208, 260 Purposeful theory of motivation and learning (Tolman), 43 Q Qin, Z., 51 Quasi-stationary equilibrium, 43, 139 Quasi-therapeutic group discussion meetings, 157, 213 R Racism/sexism, 133, 160, 162, 292 Rage, 34, 112–113, 206–207, 216–217, 231 Raphael, D., 1 Rapport-building skills, 36–37 Rapson, R., 132 Ravitch, S., 165 Rawls, J. A., 35, 194, 258 Reactance theory, 43 Read, S. J., 283 Reconciliation, 34, 97, 112–113, 140, 221, 241, 274, 310–311, 313 The Reconstruction (1865–1877), 126, 130 Redistribution, 162, 165–166, 177, 234 Reflective practitioner, 38–40 Reichert, M., 165 Relative deprivation, 81, 98, 104, 151–155, 168, 209–212, 228–230 importance/salience, 152 magnitude of, 152 Religion suggestions to counter intolerance, 298 Research Methods in Social Relations (Jahoda et al.), 8 The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes (Deutsch), 12, 300 Resolving Social Conflicts (Lewin), 121 Resource distribution, 123, 125

Index Responsibility forces, 44, 54–55 Restitution, 102–103, 114 Retributive injustice, 96, 110, 196, 199–201 Revolution of rising expectations, 99, 154, 211 Reykowski, J., 310 Reynolds, K., 184 Ridicule and embarrassment, 158, 220 Right-wing authoritarian personality, 150–151 Rockpord Bullying Study, 170–177 denaturalizing civilized oppression, 172 naming bullying as injustice of dignity, 171 privileges, 170 research teams, 170–171 responsibility for cultural change, 176–177 school culture/structural injustices, 173 Role exchanging/reversal, empathy method, 112, 296–297 Role playing, empathy method, 112, 214, 223, 297 Roseth, C. J., 51 Ross, E. A., 273, 282 Rouhana, N., 263 Rubin, J. Z., 12, 60, 120, 236, 281–282, 310 Rudman, L. A., 232, 235 Ruglis, J., 181, 187 Runciman, W. C., 151, 209, 229 Rusbult, C. E., 137 Russell, F. H., 166 Ryff, C. D., 138 S Sadomasochism, 207, 250t Salas, J., 184 Sanchez, D. T., 132 Sanford, R. N., 7 Satisfactions-dissatisfactions, experienced changes in, 153, 210–211 Saunders, D. M., 276 Schneider, A. K., 230 Scholz, J. K., 197 Schroeder, S. A., 227 Schwarz, N., 207 Scope of Justice scale, 103–106, 111, 122, 127–131, 136, 138, 174 Self-abasement, 102, 114, 149 Self-concept, 150, 268 Self-discipline, 218, 223 Self-esteem, 7, 17, 28, 47–48, 53–54, 53t, 56, 59, 100–101, 148, 206, 209, 216–217, 229, 259, 296, 298, 301–303, 305

Index Self-fulfilling prophecies, 27–28, 201–202, 205–207 Self-healing, 113 Self-image, 203–204, 303 Self-reform, 102, 114 Self-reinforcement, 202 Semi-official terror, 202 Sen, A., 138, 196 Sense of injustice, 147–163 conditions affecting conception of “what one is entitled to”, 153–155 comparing oneself to others, 153–154 ideologies and myths, 153 official ideologies, 153–154 one’s perceived bargaining power, 155 satisfactions-dissatisfactions, 154 conditions awakening and intensifying, 153–154 deprivation, types of, 124 conditions awakening victimizers, 168 definition, 159 oppression and social change, Deutsch’s framework, 228–230 perceptions of entitlement, factors, 229 ratio of satisfaction to dissatisfaction, 230 self needs and system demands, 229 system-justifying ideologies, 229 and overcoming oppression, 227–242 awakening the sense of injustice, 227 system justification theory, 230–236 social action, 162–163 victims vs. victimizers, differential sensitivity, 208–209 child-rearing practices, 148 identification with the aggressor, 148 identification with the underdog/ personality types, 150 self-regard/self-hater, 148 See also Injustice, awakening in 21st century Sharp, G., 222, 295 Sheats, P., 249 Sherif, M., 1 Shriver, D. W., Jr., 113 Sidanius, J., 202, 205, 227 Sivard, R. L., 291 Skill capital, 197 Skinner, B., 8, 15, 49 Skon, L., 51 Slumber of complacency, 168–169, 183, 188 Smeeding, T. M., 227

325 Smith, A., 49 Smith, H. J., 96, 196, 229–231 Social capital, 197 Social cohesion, 98, 156, 159, 212–213 Social comparisons, 137, 168, 230 Social contract theory (Plato), 273 Social Dominance (Sidanius & Pratto), 202, 235, 276 Social Inequality (Neckerman), 193 Social interdependence, Deutsch’s theory of, 41–44 conceptual clarity/definitions, 44–45 conditions for constructive competition, 57 cooperation, elements of, 54 cumulative nature, 44 foundation for other theories, 49–50 group processing, 56 implementation, 57–59 positive interdependence, 54–55 promotive interaction, 56 responsibility forces, 55 positive relationships/social support, 52–53 powerfulness, 48–49 profoundness, 45–47 psychological health and self-esteem, 53–54 responsibility and accountability, 55 social skills, 56 strategicness, 47–48 testability/research on, 50–52, 52f, 53t Social Justice Research, 18 Social justice research, 119, 122, 127, 133, 136 Social organization, 109, 156–157, 159, 212–213, 240 Social psychological analysis, 168 Social psychology “awakening” projects Polling for Justice (PFJ), 178–186 Rockpord Bullying Study, 170–177 processes, theory of cooperation and competition, 25–26 attitudes, 25 inducibility, 25–26 substitutability, 25 Social relations and psychological orientations (PO), theory of, 247–269 adaptivity, 276 aspects of social relations, 276 cooperation-competition/ equality-inequality of power, 275 Crude Law of Social Relations, 275

326

Index Terrorism, 140, 183, 200, 221 Theories in Social Psychology (Deutsch & Krauss), 10, 44, 48 Theory of psychodynamics (Freud), 51 Thibaut, J. W., 5, 248, 273, 275, 277–278 Thorson, S. J., 300 Tjosvold, D., 47, 50, 57 Tocqueville, A. de., 154, 211 Tolman, D. L., 133 Tolman, E. C., 43 Torre, M. E., 119, 165, 167, 178, 186 Triandis, H. C., 248, 275, 277 Triplett, N., 49, 51 Trust, 50, 107 mutual, 115, 156, 158 and suspicion, 8–9, 13, 27 Turner, J., 184 Tyler, T. R., 50, 80, 96, 196, 194, 228, 238

Social relations (cont.) dyadic relationships, basic dimensions, 274–275 Lewin’s [Bf(P x E)] formula, 276 PO, definition, 275 prospects, 276 relationship power, 275 types of, 250t Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), 1, 166 Socio-political systems, 231, 235–236 Solomon, S., 19, 284 Solutions, inventing auction procedure, 116 divide-and-choose approach, 116 Split-personality disorder, 273 Stanne, M., 51, 57 Staub, E., 104, 114 Steil, J. M., 12, 101, 131–132, 168, 208, 228, 310 Stephenson, W., 138 Stereotypes, 95, 111, 126, 196, 205, 235 Stoudt, B. G., 165–190 Subasic, E., 184 Substitutability, 24–26, 30, 42 Sun, H., 57 System justification motivation, 228–241 System justification theory (SJT), 230–236 epistemic/existential/relational needs, 239 as implicit goal pursuit, 233–234 system affirmation task, 234 internalization of inferiority, 231–232 depressed entitlement among women, 231–232 implicit and explicit outgroup favoritism, 232 self-objectification, 232 justice-promoting behaviors, 234 “justice motive”, 234 process of injunctification, 233 experiments and results, 233 social costs of challenging system, 235 backlash in counter-normative behavior, 235

V Vallacher, R. R., 273–286 Van Lange, P. A. M., 137, 273, 277, 279 Victims and victimizers, sense of injustice in, 100–101, 168, 187 See also Sense of injustice Vietcong, 156, 213 Vietnam War, 13, 120, 309 Violence Mandela, judicious use of, 218–219 and nonviolence, see Nonviolence Vogele, W. B., 223 Von Mises, L., 49

T Tajfel, H., 19, 151, 209 Task-oriented vs. social-emotional interdependence, 248–249 cognitive orientation, 254–256 moral orientation, 256–257 motivational orientation, 257–258 Taylor, A. D., 116

W Walker, I., 229 Walzer, M., 123, 194 Wang, A., 132 Ward, T., 55 Weber, M., 249 Wegener, B., 230 Wegener, D. T., 214

U UN Declaration of Human Rights, 311 Underprivileged/underdog, identification with, 149–150, 206, 209, 229 Universalization, 106, 200 Unofficial terror, 202 Unwitting commitments, 27–28 Utopian proposal for changing the world practical effects of theory, 310 proposal for changing the world, 311 visions, 313

Index Weiner, B., 262 White Attitudes toward Black People (Campbell), 149 White, R. K., 13, 138 Willis, R., 195 Win-lose orientation, 29, 32–33, 98, 109, 116, 291, 295, 301 Winner-take-all system, 267–268 Win-win orientation, 23, 32, 108, 116, 306 Wish, M., 14–15, 248–249, 251, 274–276, 282

327 World War II, 60, 120, 129–130, 154, 294 Wright, O., 10, 305 Wysong, E., 196–197, 203 Y Young, M. I., 95, 106, 165, 196, 200 Z Zander, A. F., 5, 248 Zartman, I. W., 281–282