Social Psychological Approaches to Conflict and Conflict Management

Prof. Yechiel Klar
Social Psychology provides many critical insights into the understanding of social conflicts and their management. These include the interaction of personalities and situations in the outbreak of conflicts and attempts at resolution, the critical importance of the subjective construal of conflict, and the roles of groups and group membership in conflicts. Among the topics to be covered in this introductory course are perception in conflict, naïve realism , dynamics of cooperation and competition, personal styles in conflicts, conflict escalation, threats and promises, trust and empathy, third party intervention, roots of violence, altruism and reason, intra-group and intergroup relations, stereotypes, social and group identity conflict between groups, destructive and constructive strategies in managing and resolving conflict, conflict in collectivist and individualistic societies.