Conflict We Can’t Escape: A Search For the Exit
In the past week, we have witnessed a flagrant reminder of the profound costs of intractable regional conflict. It’s the kind of conflict that not only extinguishes human lives, but which annihilates dignity, compassion, and hope.
I’ve been in my own tailspin about the recent events in the Middle East, both for personal and professional reasons. I’d already been immersed in a new book project exploring the cognitive and emotional roots of relational misunderstanding. That work had led me to gather research and other writing about intractable conflict. Not surprisingly, much of what I’ve consumed involves analysis of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
But the events in the Middle East aren’t only of professional interest. As may be obvious from my name, it’s also personal. My parents are Israeli and although I was born and raised in America, I spent many summers there visiting my extended family.
My perspective is shaped by my Israeli heritage, but it’s also shaped by being a couples’ researcher, marital therapist, and someone obsessed with the causes of and cures for pernicious forms of conflict. It is with this acknowledgement of my background that I’d like to share some science about the psychology of intractable conflict, defined as conflict that takes on a life of its own, leaving incalculable devastation on both sides and persisting far longer than anyone thinks is wise.
My intention to discuss conflict is not political; it’s psychological and relational. Though focusing on politics is reasonable at this moment, we can’t forget that psychology—that is, the complex associations between human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors—is at the root. There is power in understanding the psychology of intractable conflict because it helps to illuminate not only how we got here, but also how we might find the exit.
The Difference Between Healthy And Unhealthy Conflict.
You don’t need to be a relationship specialist to recognize that most of the time conflict is a healthy part of life. It’s also inherent in a well-functioning civic life. People and groups differing in ideologies, moral compasses, and cultural practices naturally hold opposing preferences for rule of law and land rights in ways that promote their own group’s welfare and infringe on the other groups.
It’s uncomfortable, to be sure, but when conflict is healthy, it’s often a force for positive movement. Unhealthy conflict, by contrast, barely moves at all.
On a visit to the New England Aquarium in Boston, I saw a sign posted above one of the tanks that read: “Healthy Communities Rely on Diversity.” Even the tension between predator and prey contributes to a yin-yang relationship that is complementary, interdependent, and full of motion.
A diverse and healthy fish tank is alive with activity, while an unhealthy one is stagnant.
As Amanda Ripley discusses in her fascinating book High Conflict, healthy conflict involves a movement towards something different via the process of disagreement. In contrast, in intractable conflict “the conflict is the destination. There’s nowhere else to go.”
As a case in point, many global citizens following the news are aware that the events of October 7th marked the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War. That war was one in which my own father fought. After fifty years of political unrest and incalculable loss, there has been virtually no movement–the very definition of stagnation.
How Does Storytelling Contribute?
If I were to ask someone involved in a longstanding, unhealthy conflict what the cause of the conflict was, the answer would likely be a simple: “Them.”
Yet conflict is rarely that simple. For one thing, as couples’ therapists are fond of saying, relationship problems are virtually always co-created. But it rarely feels that way to someone inside of a conflict. In fact, most people fail to perceive their own contributions due to innate biases in how the human brain assigns blame.
Consider one of the most well-studied cognitive biases: the fundamental attribution error. This term explains the common tendency to view faults in others as being due to their innate character flaws. When it comes to our own faults, however, we are more likely to identify causes outside of ourselves. This wisdom came long before behavioral science found laboratory evidence. As it is written in the Bible (Matthew 7:3): “Why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but fail to see the log in your own?”
Consider the everyday examples of this, like when your partner didn’t do the dishes. What was your explanation for their behavior (‘Lazy! Selfish!’) versus the reasons you failed to do them the week before (‘I was exhausted from working so hard.’)?
It should come as no surprise that those inside of longstanding conflicts are even more susceptible to seeing faults in opposing groups as due to innate defects in their character. Cognitive biases play an important role in fomenting intractable conflict.
The Problem of Storytelling.
Biases like the fundamental attribution error contribute to storytelling that paints a picture of one side as “good,” another as “bad.” The stories our minds tell are much simpler than our reality. Simple stories lead us to label our opposition in ways that entirely lack nuance, causing us to perceive complex humans in cartoonish one-dimensionality.
Evil cartoon figures, of course, don’t have a depth that warrants efforts to understand them. Applying that same kind of thinking to people we see as enemies means we might conclude there is little point in trying to understand their complexity. This, in essence, represents the process of dehumanization (i.e., seeing them as not fully human).
In intractable conflicts, dehumanization often occurs in both directions due to a natural, self-perpetuating cycle. Seeing others as evil and dangerous justifies the taking of extreme action to protect ourselves and those we love. But those actions are likely to be viewed by the opposition as evidence of our own evil dangerousness. That, of course, naturally prompts others to up the ante in what they see as a justifiable counterattack.
And when there is an attack-counterattack cycle, one of the stickiest human emotions, hatred, is likely to develop. When we hate people or groups, we tend to believe they are fundamentally evil and lacking in humanity, and that those fundamental characteristics are unchangeable. Hatred is an emotion that underlies dehumanization.
Viewing others as essentially lacking basic humanity then kills the possibilities for effective negotiation or listening. As conflict researcher, Eran Halperin, writes in his fascinating book, Emotions In Conflict, both sides “do not trust their adversary, because they do not believe the adversary can change its immoral and aggressive behavior, because they are afraid that such concessions will put them in a position of high risk and threat, and also because they do not want their concessions to be perceived as an ultimate confession of responsibility for all past (immoral) events of the conflict.”
Simple stories and the associated cognitive and emotional processes we engage in while inside of conflict can easily keep us from seeing the exit sign out of conflict.
So, Is It Possible to Exit Intractable Conflict?
The short answer: Yes.
But exiting is no easy feat. There needs to be a commitment to moving out of stagnation, to perceiving our own contributions, to unhooking from unhelpful storylines, to seeing complex humans on all sides, to loosening the grip of hatred, and to fostering hope (even when things feel bleak).
The notion that there are some people you simply can’t find a way to cooperate with flies in the face of the recent evidence-based transformation in the tactics used in the intelligence community. Where it was once common practice to pressure prisoners with intimidation and pain, interrogators now believe that rapport and fear reduction techniques sets the stage for more effective truth-telling and cooperation.
There are often options on the table that a mind trapped in conflict will struggle to see. Recognizing that intractable conflict puts blinders on us can help us to see past them.
Ultimately, whether you are on the frontlines or not, you have choices in how to respond to intractable conflict. Understanding the nature of intractable conflict wakes us up to where the choices exist and which directions we’d most like to go. I’d summarize how research suggests we can exit intractable conflict as deliberately heading in the opposite direction of our natural impulses by engaging in practices like the following:
· Find some movement. Recognizing that intractable conflict is characterized by stagnation, seek out movement by trying a different practice. Consider approaches from the bullet points below.
· Get curious. There is almost always more than meets the eye, despite initial perceptions. Get curious about what you might be missing or how someone else might see things differently.
· Actively add nuance to stories. Getting curious is the first step; the second is to actively look for complexity to add to the stories your mind tells.
· In the face of dehumanization, seek out shared human commonalities. Any time your mind says an opposing group has nothing in common with you, remember that even inside of the most tragic of conflicts, people have more similarities than differences. In the absence of the being able to actually make contact (shown to help opposing parties re-humanize one another), you can remember that virtually all humans want to protect themselves and those they love.
· Nurture hope. It’s easy to drop into despair about whether things could ever get better. But when we stop holding hope for a better future, we cease trying to foster that better future. We owe it to our children and our children’s children to do better and it begins with believing that we can.
By applying this kind of psychological wisdom, we might be able to help our global community get to a place where, fifty years from now, we won’t still be telling this same tragic story.