Conflict Outcome Versus Conflict Process
We differentiate studies in their emphasis on conflict outcomes versus the process that leads to the outcomes. Most conflict studies examine either a sample of conflicts (e.g., Holmes & Sykes, 1993; Poole & Roth, 1989) or a sample of individuals experiencing, anticipating, imagining, or recalling conflict (e.g., Cai & Fink, 2002; Maoz & Ellis, 2001; Ting-Toomey, Oetzel, & Yee-Jung, 2001).
The use of samples of individuals, as opposed to a sample of conflicts, has been associated with outcome-oriented research rather than research that focuses on the relational process between actors (e.g., individuals, groups, organizations, states, and cultures) that may result in conflict. The data examined for outcome-oriented investigations are likely to be cross-sectional—measured at one time— and even when attributes of conflict are included or predicted, there is not likely to be a no-conflict group—a control group—that would enable the conflict-generating or conflict-resolving process to be adequately evaluated and understood. This type of research (i.e., research without a no-conflict group) is used to explain the management of conflict once an interaction event has reached a threshold that justifies the label conflict.We can contrast the outcome approach with that of the process approach to understanding conflict, the latter of which entails a trajectory of variables that indicates conflict, disinterest, and accord between parties. Although most process-oriented conflict studies tend to focus on contexts or relationships that are conflic- tual, trajectories of conflict variables represent time courses of cooperation just as well as time courses of conflict (for studies over time see, e.g., Donohue & Druckman, 2009; Holmes, 1997; Holmes & Sykes, 1993; Poole & Roth, 1989; Rogan & Hammer, 1995a, 1995b). Over-time data allow for the explanation of conflict trajectories, whether they refer to dyads or to states.
Considering conflict in this way makes it normal, in the sense that we are not viewing conflict as an aberrant segment of a relationship or as a pathological event but rather as a dynamic generated by ordinary sequences and magnitudes of activity. Both Freud and Festinger represent scholars for whom conflict was part of the normal process of emoting, thinking, interacting, and behaving; in a word—living. A normal conflict approach considers conflict to be ordinary and normative (in an actuarial sense) within the everyday actions of people, groups, communities, states, and cultures.There are methodological implications of such a normal conflict approach. With this approach, conflict is likely to be examined as a continuous variable (e.g., degree, level, intensity, or breadth of conflict), and over-time investigations of the causes and consequences of conflict (e.g., panel and time-series investigations) are more likely. When conflict is examined experimentally, a control group is more likely to represent a state of no conflict or of cooperation rather than of a different type of conflict or of a low level of conflict.
Process-oriented approaches typically do not use exclusively cross-sectional data, although such an approach is not impossible. However, as illustrated in the examples above, it is typically the case that different concep- tions—conflict as outcome versus conflict as process—result in different kinds of data employing different analytic methods.