INITIATING COOPERATION AND COMPETITION

If we know that cooperative and competitive processes have important effects on conflict resolution, a question follows: what initiates or gives rise to one or the other process? We did much research (Deutsch, 1973) in an attempt to find the answer.

The characteristic processes and effects elicited by a given type of social relationship also tend to elicit that type of social relationship.

Thus, cooperation induces and is induced by perceived similarity in beliefs and attitudes, readiness to be helpful, openness in communication, trusting and friendly attitudes, sensitivity to common interests and de-emphasis of opposed interests, orientation toward enhancing mutual power rather than power dif­ferences, and so on. Similarly, competition induces and is induced by use of the tactics of coercion, threat, or deception; attempts to enhance the power differ­ences between oneself and the other; poor communication; minimization of the awareness of similarities in values and increased sensitivity to opposed inter­ests; suspicious and hostile attitudes; the importance, rigidity, and size of issues in conflict; and so on.

In other words, if one has systematic knowledge of the effects of cooperative and competitive processes, one has systematic knowledge of the conditions that typically give rise to such processes and, by extension, to the conditions that affect whether a conflict takes a constructive or destructive course. My early theory of cooperation and competition is a theory of the effects of cooperative and com­petitive processes. Hence, from the Crude Law of Social Relations, it follows that this theory brings insight into the conditions that give rise to cooperative and com­petitive processes.

This law is certainly crude. It expresses surface similarities between effects and causes; the basic relationships are genotypical rather than phenotypical. The surface effects of cooperation and competition are due to the underlying type of interdependence (positive or negative) and type of action (effective or bungling), the basic social psychological processes involved in the theory (sub­stitutability, attitudes, and inducibility), and the cultural or social medium and situational context in which these processes are expressed. Thus, how a posi­tive attitude is expressed in an effective, positively interdependent relationship depends on what is appropriate to the cultural or social medium and situational context; that is, presumably one would not seek to express it in a way that is humiliating or embarrassing or likely to be experienced negatively by one’s partner.

Similarly, the effectiveness of any typical effect of cooperation or competi­tion as an initiating or inducing condition of a cooperative or competitive process is not due to its phenotype but rather to the inferred genotype of the type of interdependence and type of action. Thus, in most social media and social contexts, perceived similarity in basic values is highly suggestive of the possibility of a positive linkage between oneself and the other. However, we are likely to see ourselves as negatively linked in a context that leads each of us to recognize that similarities in values impel seeking something that is in scarce supply and available for only one of us. Also, it is evident that although threats are mostly perceived in a way that suggests a negative linkage, any threat per­ceived as intended to compel you to do something that is good for you or that you feel you should do is apt to be suggestive of a positive linkage.

Although the law is crude, my impression is that it is reasonably accurate; phenotypes often indicate the underlying genotypes. Moreover, it is a synthe­sizing principle, which integrates and summarizes a wide range of social psy­chological phenomena. The typical effects of a given relationship tend to induce that relationship; similarly, it seems that any of the typical effects of a given relationship tend to induce the other typical effects. For example, among the typical effects of a cooperative relationship are positive attitudes, perception of similarities, open communication, and orientation toward mutual enhancement. One can integrate much of the literature on the determinants of positive and neg­ative attitudes in terms of the other associated effects of cooperation and com­petition. Thus, positive attitudes result from perceptions of similarity, open communication, and so on. Similarly, many of the determinants of effective com­munication can be linked to the other typical effects of cooperation or competi­tion, such as positive attitudes and power sharing.