DIVERSITY AND ETHNIC CONFLICTS LECTURE 10

Conflict What kindles conflict? Social psychological studies have identified several ingredients.

Conflict What’s striking is that the ingredients are common to all levels of social conflict, whether international, intergroup, or interpersonal.

Social Dilemmas Several of the problems that threaten the future – nuclear arms, global warming, overpopulation, and natural resource depletion -- arise as different parties pursue their self-interest, ironically, to their collective disadvantage.

Social Dilemmas For example, in some societies individuals benefit by having many children who, they assume, can help wit the family tasks and provide security in the parents ’ old age. But if most families have many children, the result is collective overpopulation.

Social Dilemmas We therefore have an urgent dilemma: How can we reconcile individuals ’ well being, including their right to pursue their personal interests, with communal well-being?

Social Dilemmas To isolate and illustrate this dilemma, social psychologists have used laboratory games that attempt to demonstrate real social conflicts.

Social Dilemmas By showing us how well-meaning people become trapped in mutually destructive behavior, they illuminate some interesting, yet troubling paradoxes of human behavior.

Social Dilemmas Consider two examples: the Prisoner ’ s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma Two prisoners are given a choice. If both confess, they get five years. If neither confesses, each gets a year. If one confesses, that prisoner is set free in exchange for evidence used to convict the other of a crime bringing a 10-year sentence.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma If you were one of the prisoners, unable to communicate with your fellow prisoner, would you confess? To minimize their own sentences, many would confess, although confession elicits more severe sentences than mutual nonconfession.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma In some 2,000 studies (Dawes, 1991) university students have faced some variation of the Prisoner ’ s Dilemma. By not cooperating, both parties end up far worse off than if they had trusted each other and thus had gained a joint profit.

The Prisoner ’ s Dilemma This dilemma often traps each one in a difficult situation in which both realize they could mutually profit but, unable to communicate and mistrusting one another, become “ locked in ” to not cooperating. In such dilemmas, the unchecked pursuit of self-interest can be harmful to all.

Tragedy of the Commons Many social dilemmas involve more than two parties. For example, global warming stems from the carbon dioxide emitted by the world ’ s cars. A metaphor for this social dilemma is what Hardin (1968) called the “ tragedy of the commons. ”

Tragedy of the Commons He derived the name from the centrally located pasture areas in old English towns, but the “ common ” can be air, water, cookies, whales and so on.

Tragedy of the Commons Imagine 100 farmers surrounding a commons capable of sustaining 100 cows. When each grazes one cow, the common feeding ground is optimally used. But then someone reasons, “ If I put a second cow in the pasture, I ’ ll double my output, minus the mere 1 percent overgrazing. ”

Tragedy of the Commons So this farmer adds a second cow. So do each of the other farmers. The result? The Tragedy of the Commons – a grassless mud field. Many real predicaments parallel this story.

Tragedy of the Commons The elements of the commons dilemma have been isolated in lab games. Put yourself in the place of Arizona State University students playing Julian Edney ’ s Nuts Games (1979). You and several other students sit around a shallow bowl that initially has 10 metal nuts.

Tragedy of the Commons The experimenter explains that your goal is to accumulate as many nuts as possible. Each of you at any time may take as many as you want, and every 10 seconds the number of nuts remaining in the bowl will be doubled. Would you leave the nuts in the bowl to regenerate, thus producing a greater harvest for all?

Tragedy of the Commons Likely not. Unless they were give time to devise and agree upon a conservation strategy, 65 percent of Edney ’ s groups never reached the first 10-second replenishment. Often the people knocked the bowl on the floor grabbing for their share.

Tragedy of the Commons Is such individualism uniquely American? Kaori Sato (1987) gave students in a more collective culture, Japan, a similar experiment and found the result was like those in Western cultures.

Tragedy of the Commons The Prisoner ’ s Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons have several similar features. Both tempt people to explain their own behavior situationally: “ I had to protect myself against exploitation by my opponent. ”

Tragedy of the Commons And both tempt people to explain their partner ’ s behavior dispositionally: “ She was greedy. ” “ He was untrustworthy. ”

Tragedy of the Commons Most people never realize that their counterparts are viewing them with the same fundamental error (Gifford & Hine, 1997).

Tragedy of the Commons Many real-life conflicts, like the Prisoners ’ Dilemma and the Tragedy of the Commons, are non-zero-sum games. The two sides ’ profits and losses need not add up to zero.

Tragedy of the Commons Both can win; both can lose. Each game pits the immediate interests of the individuals against the well being of the group.

Tragedy of the Commons Each is a diabolical social trap that shows how, even when individuals behave “ rationally, ” harm can result. No malicious person planned for the earth ’ s atmosphere to be warmed by a blanket of carbon dioxide.

Resolving social dilemmas How can we induce people to cooperate for their mutual betterment? Establish rules that regulate self-serving behavior. Keep social groups small so people feel responsibility for one anther.

Resolving social dilemmas Enable communication. Reduce mistrust. Change payoffs to make cooperation more rewarding. Invoke altruistic norms.

Misperception Recall that conflict is a perceived incompatibility of actions or goals. Many conflicts contain but a small core of truly incompatible goals; the bigger problems are the misperceptions of the other ’ s motives and goals.

Misperception In earlier lectures I considered the seeds of such misperception. The self-serving bias leads individuals and groups to accept credit for their good deeds and shuck responsibility for bad deeds without according others the same benefit of the doubt.

Misperception A tendency to self-justify further inclines people to deny the wrong of their evil acts that cannot be shucked off.

Misperception Because of the fundamental attribution error, each side sees the other ’ s hostility as an evil disposition. One then filters the information and interprets it to fit one ’ s preconceptions.

Misperception Groups often polarize these self-serving, self-justifying, biasing tendencies. One symptom of groupthink is the tendency to perceive one ’ s own group as moral and strong, the opposition as evil and weak.

Misperception Terrorist acts that are despicable brutality to most people are “ holy war ” to others. Indeed the mere fact of being in a group triggers an in-group bias. And negative stereotypes, once formed, are often resistant to contradictory evidence.

Misperception So it should not be a surprise to us, to discover that people in conflict form distorted images of one another.

Mirror-image perceptions To a striking degree, misperceptions of those in conflict are mutual. People in conflict attribute similar virtues to themselves and vices to the other (Tobin & Eagles, 1992).

Mirror-image perceptions Reciprocal views of one another are often held by parties in ethnic conflicts. For example, each may view itself as moral and peace loving and the other as evil and aggressive.

Negative mirror-image perceptions Negative mirror-image perceptions have been an obstacle to peace in many places: Both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict insisted that “ we ” are motivated by our need to protect our security and our territory, while “ They ” want to obliterate us and take our land.

Negative mirror-image perceptions “We” are the indigenous people here; “they” are the invaders. “We” are the victims, “they” are the aggressors” (Heradstveit, 1979; Rouhana & Bar-Tal, 1998). Given such intense mistrust, negotiation is difficult.

Negative mirror-image perceptions At Northern Ireland ’ s University of Ulster, Hunter and his colleagues (1991) showed Catholic and Protestant students videos of a Protestant attack at a Catholic funeral and a Catholic attack at a Protestant funeral.

Negative mirror-image perceptions Most students attributed the other side ’ s attack to “ bloodthirsty ” motives but its own side ’ s attack to retaliation or self- defense.

Negative mirror-image perceptions Muslims and Hindus in Bangladesh exhibit the same in-group-favoring perceptions (Islaem & Hewstone, 1993).