Reducing Intra-Group Conflict

Introduction: This Tree is emergent from PH2-Inquiry and contains all the PH-L4 elements. It comes into play when a group's cohesion is shattered by intense discord and there are doubts about whether you can restore social harmony.

Emergence from PH2-Inquiry

PH2-Inquiry provides the capacity for confident judgements and the development of knowledge. But knowledge often ends up as dogma or ideology governing not only how people think, but how they live, see themselves and relate to others. Mostly there is peaceful co-existence between groups. However, even within a single cohesive group, there may be sub-groups with different needs, ideas, values and customs.

Rival sub-groups cannot simply ignore each other because there is competition for social goods and the levers of power. Inquiry into differences and discrimination is therefore natural. This politics applies as much within a small bowling club or academic department, as to a populous nation. Social cohesion is therefore a precious state that must be constantly sustained by endeavours-proper targeted to engendering member belonging, loyalty, and harmonious interaction.

Group life is dynamic and periodic disagreements and misunderstandings between members of sub-groups are to be expected. There may be low-level endemic prejudices, with periodic confrontations and episodes of injustice. Mostly such ripples of discontent can be handled through members showing a civil tolerance and restraint and expressing goodwill in ordinary exchanges. The group leadership will be expected to promptly and explicitly right wrongs and arrange for fairness.

However, for various reasons, mutual animosity may develop and resist soothing. If the leadership fails to respond, outrages and flare-ups then start occurring over seemingly minor violations of sensitivities. As hostility and distrust build, cohesion correspondingly deteriorates. The group becomes increasingly dysfunctional and riven with discord. Eventually, it starts to look as if it will split or distintegrate.

However, if division or disintegration is undesirable or is intrinsically impossible, then the only alternatives are to leave that group, or to assume a leadership role dedicated to restoring internal harmony by reducing conflict. The way to reduce conflict at a time of intense strife is to use a framework comprised solely of PH-L4 elements which are vehicles for well-being.

With intentions to deliver well-being for your sub-group and/or the whole group, you are taking on the role of political leader.

Example: Groups that form around ideas are particularly prone to intense factionalization and splitting. Religions break up into sects. Political parties, especially those on the Left, commonly struggle to cohere. Psychoanalytic organizations have had numerous splits …Closed subdivisions started with secessions led by Jung and Adler. Even within classical psychoanalysis, there has been intolerance. In the UK, the British Psychoanalytic Society has maintained its unity despite 3 subdivisions; but similar pressures in France led to a series of new psychoanalytic societies. Similar splits are evident world-wide. See a psychoanalytic view.

ClosedMore on Life's Necessity: Sustaining Social Cohesion

Any social group has a number of sub-groups with their own identities. Associations have their factions that coalesce around a particular policy or personality. Academic disciplines may spawn groups built around rival theories, methods or programs of inquiry. Communities have groups distinguished by their occupations and wealth (e.g. socio-economic classes); or by distinct ideologies or ways of life (e.g. religions).

When you become a member of any group, you inevitably become part of one of the competing factions, like it or not. Those factions have political leaders who speak for the members. Only the leadership of the whole group is, by definition, expected to rise above factional loyalty. This framework addresses the mindset of someone in any of these political roles.

If group leadership is captured by one of the factions, then splitting becomes much more likely. Within a nation, civil turmoil or even war may occur. This is the current situation in Syria (Alawites in power, Sunni majority) and Bahrain (Sunni in power, Shia majority). Singapore was founded with a population of Chinese, Malaysians and Indians, following race riots in 1964. Although the Chinese were and are dominant, Lee Kwan Yew gave racial harmony and religious tolerance the highest priority and used the law to create a unique national identity which recognised racial consciousness.

Why the Framework is all PH-L4s

It is hard to maintain well-being when factional rivalry erupts. Atmospheres start reeking of hostility, explosive emotions are sensed under the surface, and there is excessive sensitivity to any manifestation of sub-group identity. Yet without its members experiencing well-being, a group cannot remain intact for long.

Investigations into the Root Projection to Primary Hierarchies suggested that PH-L4 elements (within their Primary Hierarchy) are constructed under a pressure for well-being (which is thought to have a distinct neurophysiological underpinning).

The Tree framework constructed out of PH-L4 elements can therefore be expected to be dedicated to the provision of well-being. Being a Root Tree, each level (KL•) will also retain its usual psychosocial pressures.

Note: The process here assumes that factional members are willing to tolerate the inner discomfort, even pain, fury or distrust, that differential rewards and burdens engender i.e. there is a strong link to Experience-RL4.

ClosedConsider Alternatives

This list is taken directly from analysis of the Root Projection.

  • Deploying a Repertoire (in PH1) maximizes the likelihood that a situation will be handled confidently one way or another. This provides for a feeling of well-being. The lack of a suitable repertoire generates feelings of helplessness. At the extreme there is traumatization and the self may be damaged.
  • Accepting Measurement (in PH2) is at the heart of confidence in testing, analysis, discovery and innovation. The precision and shared standard base generate the well-being that underpins cooperation, replication and valuation of systematic inquiry.
  • Ensure Sustenance (in PH3) accords with the desire that everyone has for conditions to be stable and continuous: even during periods of major change. A sustained state is equated with well-being and provides a confident base for improvement or future change. Confusion and turmoil are distressing, especially when they threaten continuity of the self and identity.
  • Embracing Ideas (in PH4) is about finding your bearings in any situation and so enabling both reflection and action. A flow of ideas, new and old, generates a sense of well-being, while a blank mind reduces confidence. (Well-being is also relevant at other levels of experience, because this is an inherent aspect of Experience-PH4.)
  • Appreciating Symbols (in PH5) enables the provision and exploration of meaning to any stimulus or mental product, even highly idiosyncratic dream images, disturbing natural events or icons (religious or patriotic). This provision of meaning, often viewed sceptically or even ridiculed, generates well-being, sometimes vital to survival within a painful reality.
  • Owning Principal Objects (in PH6) provides for the survival of a project despite the vicissitudes of the environment. The sustenance of these goals depends on how members feel. The self provides energies and resources to nurture what it owns, but once the objects cease to generate well-being, the project is soon abandoned.
  • Welcoming Participation (in PH7) is about accepting frustrations inherent in adapting to the group and its members while still feeling good about membership. It is never possible to have full control of any situation, group, or relationship, so compromising in some fashion is inevitable. However, gratification and satisfaction is necessary and without basic well-being, participation will not persist.

Renewal & Recovery

Summary Only: This is an abbreviated overview of the Tree with a focus on the Willingness element. A fuller account is provided in the next topic. Understanding the various Primary Hierarchy elements is assumed. For more details within the Architecture Room, review the relevant part of the Root Projection section.

The heart of the framework is KL4: Feeling Good about Participating. Despite conflicts and bad feelings, an over-arching comfort about participation in the group must if the situation is to be managed. The strife is about one or more sub-group, i.e. factions, not receiving its due and feeling devalued or oppressed. Recovery therefore requires every sub-group to get something and feel better treated. As a leader or politician within your own group, you cannot avoid responsibilities for that and nor can you exit. You must fight for your group and protect your own faction. While that will only occur if you feel good about participating, that participation must be judicious and based on feeds from other Centres.

Feeding into Participating-KL4 from above are the 5 Centres that enable renewal of the diverse endeavours-proper that sustain group cohesion.

Symbols-KL7 unite any group. So respecting symbols of all sub-groups is necessary, even if some seem objectionable. This demand challenges participation.

Respect for symbols should enable sustenance-KL6 of the group if it can focus sustained discussions, and release resources supporting all factions. Constancy shows you are committed to participating, and a provision of resources provides situational support for participation.

Then you must carefully measure-KL5 as best you can what is at stake. You need cost-benefit analyses for the group as a whole, and you must appreciate the calculations of those in the various factions, especially the political leaders, in relation to any proposal. That will make your participation realistic and ensure it is is accepted.

Feeding into Participating-KL4 from below are the 3 Centres that enable recovery of a viable modus vivendi within your social group.

The primary aims-KL3 of the group as a whole and of the various factions require promotion. Above all, you must insist on the rationale for your group's existence to encourage participation. But, perhaps more importantly, you must openly support the aims of each faction for your participation to be credible.

Ideas-KL2 are the basis for differences and the road to their resolution. Ideas should be used to energize participation-. These ideas must align with factional aims and reaffirm the group's rationale.

Bypassing Partipating-KL4 to connect Renewal with Recovery are two levels essential for reducing conflict effectively: cost-benefit analyses (KL5) and primary aims (KL3). Your cost-benefit analyses for your group must validate your support for rationales of all groups. Your appreciation of their calculations should justify your insistence on your group's primary aims.

Final Common Path: A wide variety of interactions need to be handled and so a repertoire-KL1 of responses needs deployment. In your position as leader, you have many options at your disposal to bring people together. You must activate your repertoire to confirm the ideas that are your reliable reference points, and vice versa.

Previous updating: 24-Mar-2014. Last updated 24-Jul-2024.