how i look at this

"One would assume the difference is within the context"

Yes, confrontation is situational, but it also has predictable and intelligible patterns, and some of these patterns fall back on things as diverse as temperament, emotional self-regulation, being able to read each other, the dynamics of the social situation, and so on. Some of this is developed from early experience, some is learned later, some is relatively inborn, and some emerges in the moment.

The main challenge is that human beings are quite good at concealing their own agendas, even from themselves, and at manipulating each other. So the first skill to pick up in learning practically about confrontation is being able to assess what is going on at a very fundamental emotional level. What does everyone want and need from the situation, how far are they willing to go to get it, and how important is it that you confront them ? If it sounds like a game of strategy, I think that's because it is. Not always intentionally, but I think it unavoidably ends up that way at some level.

A big part of this is refining your natural ability to sense what is happening with other people around you. You can't enter into a confrontational situation and expect any predictable outcome unless you understand the power of the emotions behind it. Some ways of confronting have a higher likelihood of a favorable outcome than others, but you have to be able to read the situation at some level as well.

Conflict in general can be thought of as simply a sign that we are engaged in something interesting. In a situation where we confront each other, we have noticed that there is something important to be gained or lost, and that other people are either needed as cooperators or are serving as obstacles. Our differences suddenly come into sharp focus, and we look for ways to eliminate them (the differences or the other people).

We rarely make this choice consciously, but what we do is that based on a variety of factors from both our background, temperament, and the circumstances, we somehow determine the relative value of the various social relations involved and the things of interest we are in conflict over, and we engage one of a number of different strategies. We may simply try to contain the conflict, we may try to confront someone in some manner to provoke a response, we may make an attempt at a collaboration, or in some cases we may focus on gathering more information and perspective from other people.

One of the keys is that not all conflict needs to be resolved, some of it is a healthy tension that promotes movement and growth. Also, our differences are sometimes very real and very meaningful, and the cost of reconciliation are sometimes very high. However, we also often avoid resolving conflict just because it is uncomfortable. And avoiding confronting conflict that really needs to be addressed can become an increasingly big problem over time.

So it is important to have some sense of when confrontation makes sense, but it is also something that people perceive differently at a very low level. Some people go through life confronting nearly everyone and everything in their path, while others are happy to step aside to avoid the fight until their life itself is at stake. It complicates things greatly that we are a social species that can strongly identify with groups, and also a symbolic species that can crystallize our intentions into ideologies and discover strategies of mass coherence. This makes patterns of conflict capable of spreading like an infection.

We end up having to deal with several elements in any form of human conflict: (1) the dynamics of the conflict, (2) the agendas of the participants (their generally unspoken attitudes and aptitudes), and (3) the issues at hand.

We tend to put most of our focus into the merits of our own position, which ironically has the smallest role to play in the outcome in most cases. The outcome of conflict is determined by the dynamics involved in most cases.

So learning about _confrontation_ or "confrontation skills" means learning about the *dynamics* of conflict.

The distinction between different ways of dealing with confrontation seems particularly dramatic in men, and I think this is because they find sustained negative emotions particularly uncomfortable, and because testosterone drives them with a particular kind of narrow focus, and the focus varies with temperament, age, and with the outcome of previous recent social interactions.

So various strategies are woven into our behavioral legacy through biology and culture, and then tuned during development in interaction with other people. Our most fundamental strategies are emotional patterns, and behaviors that provoke emotions in others, so understanding confrontation first involves understanding the somewhat predictable emotional patterns underlying it. That's where I think the study begins.

Replies:

Re:how i look at this, by Deb, 03/01/02

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