Emotion And Conflict

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Emotions play a role in how parties make sense of their relationships, degree of power and social status. People constantly evaluate situations and events to evaluate if they are personally relevant. These understandings and appraisals are infused with various emotions and feelings. Thus, emotion not only serves as a side effect of conflict but also frames the way in which parties understand and define their dispute.

Secondly, within the context of relationships, emotions typically serve a “forward-looking communicative function” and express people’s agendas, desires and goals. When parties perceive that they have incompatible goals or that others are interfering with their desires and pursuits, this elicits emotions and leads to conflict. Often the desires in question are a matter of wanting to be taken seriously, treated with respect and to have one’s identity affirmed. Perceived threats to identity and signs of disrespect typically cause emotions to flare and result in interpersonal or intergroup conflict. In other words, the same issues that lead to protracted conflict, (e.g., values, status and identity) are also the triggers of strong emotions. People who feel “unfairly attacked, misunderstood, wronged or righteously indignant” are typically overcome with emotion and respond with hostility and aggression. The intensity of emotion often signifies the importance and salience of an issue and reveals the underlying values of disputants. Thus, the more personally relevant a situation seems and the more negative feelings parties experience, the greater the potential for destructive conflict.

Some common emotional responses that reveal concerns about identity are pride, shame and anger. While feelings of pride are linked to parties’ feelings of closeness and connectedness, feelings of shame often result from parties’ sense that these relationships are threatened. Parties caught in a dispute are prone to unintentionally humiliate each other or disregard one another’s perspectives. Resulting in feelings of humiliation and disrespect that may give rise to unacknowledged shame. Whether parties can manage shame determine whether there will be cooperation or protracted conflict. If they remain unacknowledged and are not dealt with, hurt feelings and shame tend to give rise to anger, aggression and conflict escalation. At this point, the substantive issues of the dispute may become less important than the parties’ hurt feelings and rage. Anger, resentment and hatred may ultimately give rise to a cycle of violence and thus serve as a driving force behind many of the world’s religious wars and ethnopolitical conflicts.