About Conflict

What Is Conflict?

Attitudes About Conflict
Conflict is one of the most pervasive aspects of human affairs. Conflict exists in almost all social relationships, whether they be personal and informal or impersonal and formal. Most people are afraid of conflict and avoid it if at all possible. There is a widespread attitude of hopelessness and helplessness in coping with conflict.

Conflict Resolution: Why We Care
The resolution of conflict is often seen as a distant possibility. One of the reasons is that people do not understand conflict and therefore do not know how to approach its resolution. One goal of this website is to provide knowledge and information for the general public and for our students so that they can provide "containers" for conflict before it erupts into destructive behavior or violence. This website seeks to facilitate the education and training of individuals so that they can become effective interveners in conflict and help people to functionally engage in conflict.

Harmful Aspects of Conflict
When conflict cannot be contained in a functional way, it can erupt in violence, war, and destruction. The harmful aspects of conflict are pretty obvious if you read the newspaper or watch the news. Less obvious is the loss of productivity on the job, the destruction of relationships, organizational breakdown, and psychological damage to individuals.

Benefits of Conflict
Conflict has many benefits if it is contained before people turns violent. It can motive people to needed action and break them out of complacency. Sometimes conflict is necessary to bring an awakening to dysfunctional relationships or behavior.

Definition of Conflict
Conflict is behavior in which people oppose one another in their thoughts, feelings, and/or actions. All conflict involves the mind. The meanings, judgements, and values that crowd our minds move us to conflict. Feelings are an important dimension of conflict. For example, anger, hostility, fear, jealousy, insecurity, pain or sadness, inadequacy, are some of the feelings underneath conflicts. Although most conflicts involve disagreements of some kind, some of them can be more about feelings than thoughts. Finally, all conflicts have an action component—external behavior such as body movements, facial expressions, or speaking, This dimension of conflict can be observed, recorded, and measured.