Resolving Conflict via Conversations: How Beliefs, Motives, and Expressions Shape Conflict Dynamics.

To truly bring a conflict to an end, it is important for disputants to reconcile through conversations, yet navigating the discussion of conflict is not a trivial pursuit. This symposium brings together four presentations exploring how beliefs, motives, and the way people communicate about conflicts impact conflict resolution. In the first presentation, Yeomans and colleagues offer an important advance in methods for detecting linguistic features of conflict expression. Using real conflict conversations, they show the precision of their coding manual and Natural Language Processing model in forecasting conflict dynamics and provide empirical support for conflict expression theory. In the second presentation, Chen and Chaudhry examine a novel psychological motive in conflict conversations: establishing a shared reality over relative blame. They demonstrate that whether disputants agree with the counterpart's relative blame perception impacts how disputants respond after being blamed (i.e., apologizing or blaming). In the third presentation, Li, Batista, and Schroeder investigate how different perceptions of responsibility division arise in miscommunication. They test whether people hold speakers as more responsible than listeners, and whether people consider their counterparts to be more responsible than themselves. In the final presentation, Boland and Davidai explore how specific beliefs can lead people to avoid potentially conflictual conversations and find that people who hold zero-sum beliefs about politics are more likely to avoid political conversations. Taken together, this symposium highlights how conflict dynamics are affected by what people believe, what they want, and what they say in conversations, providing insights into actionable recommendations for conflict resolution. A Natural Language Processing Model for Conflict Expression Author: Michael Yeomans; Imperial College Business School Author: Corinne Bendersky; U. of California, Los Angeles Author: Laurie R. Weingart; Carnegie Mellon U. Author: Yeonjeong Kim; Massachusetts Institute of Technology To Blame or to Apologize? Resolving a Conflict Requires Negotiating Over a Shared Reality Author: Eva Yiyu Chen; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Shereen J. Chaudhry; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Who's at Fault? Assignment of Responsibility in Miscommunication Author: Sophia Li; Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Author: Rafael Batista; U. of Chicago Booth School of business Author: Juliana Schroeder; U. of California, Berkeley Zero-Sum Beliefs and the Avoidance of Political Conversations Author: F Katelynn Boland; Columbia Business School Author: Shai Davidai; Columbia Business School [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]