THEORY
There is no more certain sign of a narrow mind, of stupidity, and of arrogance, than to stand aloof from those who think differently from us.
—Walter Savage Landor
Rique Campa, a Professor in the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife at Michigan State University, asked his class, “Can a marina be developed in an environmentally sensitive area where piping plovers (a shorebird) have a breeding ground?” Constructive controversy begins with a strong cooperative goal for the group to achieve.
The group members are to examine the two sides to the issue and come to their best reasoned judgment as to how to solve the problem. All students must agree on the final plan. Professor Campa emphasizes that there are no “winners” or “losers,” only the quality of the final decision matters. He assigns students to groups of four, divides each group into two pairs, and assigns one pair the Developer Position and the other pair the Department of Natural Resources Position. He then follows the structured academic constructive controversy procedure over several class periods. Participants research the issue, prepare a persuasive case for their position, present their position in a compelling and interesting way, refute the opposing position while rebutting criticisms of their position, take the opposing perspectives, and derive a synthesis or integration of the positions. In conducting the constructive controversy, Professor Campa is operationalizing the theoretical process by which constructive controversy is implemented.Professor Campa is conducting a lesson based on the process of constructive controversy. The process, which is based on cooperation, involves the following theoretical assumptions (D. W. Johnson and R. Johnson, 1979, 1989, 1995):
1. When individuals are presented with a problem or decision, they have an initial conclusion based on categorizing and organizing incomplete information, their limited experiences, and their specific perspective.
They have a high degree of confidence in their conclusions. (They freeze the epistemic process.)2. When individuals present their conclusion and its rationale to others, they engage in cognitive rehearsal, deepen their understanding of their position, and use higher-level reasoning strategies.
3. When individuals are confronted with different conclusions based on other people’s information, experiences, and perspectives, they become uncertain as to the correctness of their views and a state of conceptual conflict or disequilibrium is aroused. They unfreeze their epistemic process.
4. Uncertainty, conceptual conflict, or disequilibrium motivates epistemic curiosity, an active search for (a) more information and new experiences (increased specific content) and (b) a more adequate cognitive perspective and reasoning process (increased validity) in hopes of resolving the uncertainty.
5. By adapting their cognitive perspective and reasoning through understanding and accommodating the perspective and reasoning of others, individuals derive a new, reconceptualized, and reorganized conclusion. Novel solutions and decisions that, on balance, are qualitatively better are detected. The positive feelings and commitment individuals feel in creating a solution to the problem together is extended to each other and interpersonal attraction increases. The competencies in managing conflicts constructively gained tend to improve psychological health. The process may begin again at this point, or it may be terminated by freezing the current conclusion and resolving any dissonance by increasing the confidence in the validity of the conclusion.
The process of debate, on the other hand, is based on competition. Two sides prepare their positions, they present the best case possible, listen carefully to the opposing position, attempt to refute it, rebut the opponent’s attempts to refute their position, and wait for the judges to declare the winner. While the process of debate begins the same as the process of controversy, the uncertainty created by being challenged results in a closed-minded, defensive rejection of other points of view and dissonant information.
Individuals thus stay committed to their original position. Since the debate requires refutation of other points of view, however, individuals do learn opposing information. Moderate achievement, relationships, and psychological health may result. The process of concurrence seeking is based on cooperation with the avoidance of conflict. Two sides prepare their positions, present the best case possible, experience uncertainty once they realize there is disagreement, but immediately seek to avoid and suppress all conflict by finding a compromise position that ends all discussion become apprehensive about the disagreement, and then seek a quick compromise to suppress the conflict. Since the differences among positions are not explored, achievement tends to be low and relationships and psychological health tend to be poor.In individualistic situations, individuals study both sides of the issue but make no oral statements, their initial conclusions are never challenged, and so their study tends to confirm what they initially thought. Low achievement tends to result. The absence of interpersonal interaction results in neutral relationships and no advances in psychological health.
Conditions Determining the Constructiveness of Controversy
Although controversies can operate in a beneficial way, they will not do so under all conditions. Whether controversy results in positive or negative consequences depends on the conditions under which it occurs and the way in which it is managed. These conditions include the context within which the constructive controversy takes place, the heterogeneity of participants, the distribution of information among group members, the level of group members’ social skills, and group members’ ability to engage in rational argument (D. W. Johnson and R. Johnson, 1979, 1989, 1995).
Cooperative Goal Structure. Deutsch (1973) emphasizes that the context in which conflicts occur has important effects on whether the conflict turns out to be constructive or destructive.
There are two possible contexts for controversy: cooperative and competitive. A cooperative context tends to facilitate constructive controversy, whereas a competitive context tends to promote destructive controversy. Controversy within a competitive context tends to promote closed- minded disinterest and rejection of the opponent’s ideas and information (Tjosvold, 1998). Within a cooperative context, constructive controversy induces feelings of comfort, pleasure, and helpfulness in discussing opposing positions, an open- minded listening to the opposing positions, motivation to hear more about the opponent’s arguments, more accurate understanding of the opponent’s position, and the reaching of more integrated positions where both one’s own and one’s opponent’s conclusions and reasoning are synthesized into a final position.Skilled Disagreement. For controversies to be managed constructively, participants need collaborative and conflict-management skills (Johnson, 2006; D. W. Johnson and F. Johnson, 2006). The skills are necessary for following and internalizing these norms:
1. I am critical of ideas, not people. I challenge and refute the ideas of the other participants, while confirming their competence and value as individuals. I do not indicate that I personally reject them.
2. I separate my personal worth from criticism of my ideas.
3. I remember that we are all in this together, sink or swim. I focus on coming to the best decision possible, not on winning.
4. I encourage everyone to participate and to master all the relevant information.
5. I listen to everyone’s ideas, even if I don’t agree.
6. I restate what someone has said if it is not clear.
7. I differentiate before I try to integrate. I first bring out all ideas and facts supporting both sides and clarify how the positions differ. Then I try to identify points of agreement and put them together in a way that makes sense.
8. I try to understand both sides of the issue. I try to see the issue from the opposing perspective in order to understand the opposing position.
9. I change my mind when the evidence clearly indicates that I should do so.
10. I emphasize rationality in seeking the best possible answer, given the available data.
11. I follow the golden rule of conflict. The golden rule is act toward opponents as you would have them act toward you. I want the opposing pair to listen to me, so I listen to them. I want the opposing pair to include my ideas in their thinking, so I include their ideas in my thinking. I want the opposing pair to see the issue from my perspective, so I take their perspective.
One of the most important skills is to be able to disagree with each other’s ideas while confirming each other’s personal competence (Tjosvold, 1998). Disagreeing with others, at the same time imputing that others are incompetent, tends to increase their commitment to their own ideas and their rejection of the other person’s information and reasoning. Disagreeing with others while simultaneously confirming their personal competence, however, results in being better liked and in opponents being less critical of others’ ideas, more interested in learning more about others’ ideas, and more willing to incorporate others’ information and reasoning into their own analysis of the problem. Protagonists are more likely to believe their goals are cooperative, integrate their perspectives, and reach agreement.
Another important set of skills for exchanging information and opinions within a constructive controversy is perspective taking (Johnson, 1971; D. W. Johnson and R. Johnson, 1989). More information, both personal and impersonal, is disclosed when one is interacting with a person who is engaging in perspective-taking behaviors, such as paraphrasing, which communicate a desire to understand accurately. Perspective-taking ability increases one’s capacity to phrase messages so that they are easily understood by others and to comprehend accurately the messages of others. Engaging in perspective taking in conflicts results in increased understanding and retention of the opponent’s information and perspective.
Perspective taking facilitates the achievement of creative, high-quality problem solving. Finally, perspective taking promotes more positive perceptions of the information exchange process, of fellow group members, and of the group’s work.A third set of skills involves the cycle of differentiation of positions and their integration (D. W. Johnson and F. Johnson, 2006). Group members should ensure that there are several cycles of differentiation (bringing out differences in positions) and integration (combining several positions into one new, creative position). The potential for integration is never greater than the adequacy of the differentiation already achieved. Most controversies go through a series of differentiations and integrations before reaching a final decision.
Rational Argument. During a constructive controversy, group members have to follow the canons of rational argumentation (D. W. Johnson and R. Johnson, 1995). Rational argumentation includes generating ideas, collecting relevant information, organizing it by using inductive and deductive logic, and making tentative conclusions based on current understanding. Rational argumentation requires that participants keep an open mind, changing their conclusions and positions when others are persuasive and convincing in their presentation of rationale, proof, and logical reasoning.