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.

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 that 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.

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 Minow, 1998; 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 have 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 posttrau- matic stress disorder (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 (Basoglu, 1992; Foa, Keane, and Friedman, 2000; Ochberg, 1988) essentially (1) gives the stressed individuals a supportive, safe, and secure environment (2) in which they can be helped to reexperience, in a modulated fashion, the vulnerability, helplessness, fear, rage, humiliation, guilt, and other emotions associated with the grievous harm (medication may be useful in limit­ing the intensity of the emotions being relived), thus (3) helping them identify the past circumstances and contexts in which the harm occurred and distinguish current realities from past realities; (4) helping them understand the reasons for his emotional reactions to the traumatic events and the appropriateness of their reactions; (5) helping them acquire the skills, attitudes, knowledge, and social support that make them less vulnerable and powerless; and (6) helping them develop an everyday life characterized by meaningful, enjoyable, and support­ive relations in their 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 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 victims to recognize the bad as well as good aspects of themselves, that they have “sinful” as well as “divine” capabilities and tendencies. In other words, one helps victims become aware of themselves as total persons—with no need to deny their own fallibility and imperfections—whose lifelong experi­ences in their family, schools, communities, ethnic and religious groups, and workplaces have played a key role in determining their own personality and behavior. As the victim comes to accept their own moral fallibility, they are 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 processes, see Nadler, 2003, and Staub, 2005).

In Chapter One, 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 establishing cooperative relations after a destructive conflict. In the following list 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, and so on. 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.

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, six months or one 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 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 and 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 this development as well as giving them extensive practice in attempting to create them.