Simple Misunderstandings

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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Simple misunderstandings occur when people believe they are in disagreement, even though they do not actually have fundamentally incompatible interests, values, or needs. One person says or does something with one meaning in mind, while the other interprets it very differently. As Beyond Intractability’s essay on misunderstandings explains, ordinary communication is never perfect, and conflict makes the problem worse because people are more likely to expect hostility and interpret ambiguous messages negatively.

Misunderstandings can arise because people use the same words differently, rely on different assumptions, or miss important information about tone and context. A call for “accountability” may be heard as a personal accusation. A request for “security” may be interpreted as an attempt to dominate. A brief email may seem angry when the writer was simply in a hurry. Cultural differences, professional jargon, political labels, facial expressions, and tone of voice can all change the meaning that a listener receives. Communication by email, text, and social media is especially vulnerable because it leaves out many of the nonverbal cues that help people understand one another, as BI’s discussion of communication skills points out.

At the societal level, misunderstandings can make political divisions appear larger and more dangerous than they really are. A nationally representative study of American public opinion found that Democrats and Republicans tended to perceive the other side as substantially more extreme than it actually was—a pattern researchers call “false polarization.” More in Common's Perception Gap illustrates this well. Other research has found that Americans often overestimate how much people in the opposing party support political violence or undemocratic behavior. In one study, simply correcting these inaccurate beliefs reduced respondents’ support for partisan violence, showing that some apparent hostility was being driven by mistaken assumptions, rather than unavoidable differences. See Mernyk and colleagues’ research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

However, once a misunderstanding triggers anger or fear, it can create a conflict that is no longer imaginary. People respond defensively to the hostility they think they see; the other side experiences that defensiveness as actual hostility and responds in kind. Rumors spread, motives are questioned, and each new reaction seems to confirm the original mistaken belief. What began as a poorly chosen word, an unclear message, or a false assumption can therefore grow into a genuine cycle of accusation, retaliation, and distrust.

The simplest remedy is to check understanding before escalating. People can ask what an unfamiliar or emotionally charged term means, request clarification, and repeat back what they think they heard. Active or empathic listening does not require agreement; it simply allows the speaker to confirm or correct the listener’s understanding. People can also describe their own perceptions and concerns, instead of confidently attacking the other person’s motives or statements.

Not every conflict can be solved through better communication, since many involve real clashes of interests, values, or power. But when the core problem is a simple misunderstanding, clarification can prevent an unnecessary conflict from becoming entrenched and destructive. And even when there are real classes of interests, values, or power, correcting misunderstandings and other "conflict overlay" problems can make the core conflict easier to see, understand, and deal with.

This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.