Parent (Previous) Guide Folders
  Constructive Conflict Guide >
  The Complex Factors That Make Intractable Conflict So Difficult >
  The Additional (and Even Bigger) Challenge of Societal Complexity >
  Types of Complexity
______________________

Psychological Complexity

BI Article
Social and Psychological Complexity
An examination of how understanding of social and psychological complexity enables more effective advocacy as well as peacebuilding.

BI Article
Psychological Dynamics of Intractable Conflicts
In intractable conflicts, it is possible for entire societies to get tangled up in negative psychological dynamics. If these dynamics are not recognized and addressed it will become difficult or impossible to resolve the conflict.

BI Article
Reflections on Neuroscience, Conflict, and Peacebuilding
Neuroscience advances into the psychological complexity of conflict behavior need to be accompanied by a comparable revolution in the way we think about the social complexity of conflict processes.

BI Article
Summary of Mari Fitzduff's Introduction to Neuroscience for the Peacebuilder - Part 1
A deeper investigation of psychological complexity and its impacts on intractability drawn from Mari Fitzduff--part 1 of 2.

BI Article
Summary of Mari Fitzduff's Introduction to Neuroscience for the Peacebuilder - Part 2
Part 2 of our review of Mari Fitzduff's monograph on neuroscience and its implications for peacebuilders.

BI Article
Social and Psychological Complexity
An examination of how understanding of social and psychological complexity enables more effective advocacy as well as peacebuilding.

BI Article
Limits of Rationality in Decision Making
Negotiation theory often assumes that people in conflict behave rationally, making their decisions on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. While rational assessment is sometimes one part of the disputants' decision making rubric, other factors usually play a significant role as well, often overriding what would be seen to be the "rational" response.

BI Article
The Blood-Boiling Trap
A look at how cognitive biases lead us to focus too much on things that are going wrong and not enough on things that are going (or could go) right.

BI Article
Cognitive Dissonance
People tend to ignore or "explain away" new information that conflicts with the way they currently think. Such "cognitive dissonance" can have both constructive and destructive effects on conflict.

Colleague Activities
What is the Backfire Effect?
From Omni-Win, an exploration of the "backfire effect," a cognitive bias that leads us to misinterpret information that challenges our beliefs as, instead, reinforcing those beliefs.

Colleague Activities
America's Divided Mind
New insights from Beyond Conflict about how polarization is fueled by Americans' misperceptions about each other, and how we can start to reverse it.

Colleague Activities
"Entangled" Social Change: From Inter-action to "Intra-action"
An insightful look at how we are all part of the conflict system, and how simply observing it is also an intervention. So HOW we observe and interpret is key.

Colleague Activities
The Science of What Makes People Care
Five principles based in social science that will help organizations connect their work to what people care most about.

Colleague Activities
Berkeley political scientists chart a promising course to ease toxic polarization
New research co-authored at UC Berkeley details the psychological processes that demagogues exploit to erode support for democracy --- and show a way to bridge the dangerous divide.

Colleague Activities
Certainty Is a Psychological Trap and It's Time to Escape
The willingness to actually listen to others and to display your ignorance is a bold move that now has a name -- intellectual humility. It's not only a developable skill, but it could just end the culture wars.

News and Opinion
Reason To Believe -- How and why irrationality takes hold, and what do to about it.
An in-depth look at the role that rational thought plays in human society, how it has made us so successful, and the many dynamics that are undermining our ability to think (and deal with conflict) in rational ways .

News and Opinion
Christine Brophy: Narcissism Behind Left-Wing Authoritarianism