Conflict and Cooperation

It describes the tendency of intergroup relations to be more competitive, or less cooperative, than interindividual relations.
While individuals within a group may prefer to be cooperative, once they join together to make a collective unit, individual orientations favouring cooperation tend to be overshadowed by competitive orientations of the group.

Fear and greed pose two reasons, or motivational tendencies, for someone in a prisoners dilemma game to choose the less cooperative option. 
The participant might be afraid of receiving the lowest possible outcome, which is based on the expectation, that the other player will select the competitive choice and therefore pose a threat.
At the same time, the participant greedily wants to gain the highest possible outcome. They expect the other person to choose the cooperative choice and be vulnerable to exploitation. 

Schema-based distrust:
The schema-based distrust describes the anticipation of interacting with another group, which in turn induces cognitive and affective responses denoting that other groups are competitive, untrustworthy, hostile and abrasive. These schema might stem from personal experience, sociocultural evolution and natural selection. 

Identifiability:
In an intergroup situation, the other player's ability to assign responsibility for competitive, self-interested behavior is typically more limited than in an interindividual context. The group membership therefore provides anonymity. This effect is called identifyability. 

Social support:
In an intergroup context, the mutual social support for the competitive pursuit of shared self-interest is possible, in contrast to an interindividual context. Normally, there are certain normative constraints, such as the norms of fairness and equality, which are reduced in an intergroup situation. 

Ingroup-favouring norm:
The group membership implies normative pressure to act to benefit the ingroup. This plays also a part for leaders of a group, who aim at increasing group achievements. The effect is increased, when there are ppossible absolute, next to relative, outcomes. 

Altruistic rationalisation:
Ieractions between groups are more competitive than interactions between idividuals,because group members can rationalise self-interest as being pursued for he sake of the ingroup.

Guilt involves the negative evaluation of specific transgressions—often ones involving harm to others and a concern for their rectification. The strong moral concern for close others that characterises high-guilt-prone persons can manifest itself in the form of either intergroup cooperation or competition, depending on the relative contextual salience of the opposing sets of norms. In other words, contextual factors that heighten the relative salience of the ingroup-favouring norm increase intergroup competition, especially for high-guilt prone people.
One contextual factor is the accountability effect (person is identifyable as group member), which was only significant when guilt-proneness was high, but not when it was low (ingroup favouring norm was more salient).
Accountable leaders (group knows, that the person is responsible) with high guilt proneness perceive ingroup favouring norms as more salient (more prone to competitiveness), while unaccountable leaders perceive fairness and equality intergroup norms as more salient. 
Ingroup empathy increases intergroup competition in high guilt-prone people, since for them ingroup favouring norm is more salient. 

Group discussions facilitate rational comprehension of mixed-motive situations and such rational comprehension plays an important role in producing the discontinuity effect. 

Group polarisation refers to the strengthening of individuals' dominant behavioural inclination or attitude following group discussion. 
The theory of group polarization is often not applicable, since interactions between individuals are typically highly cooperative. Furthermore, prior research has shown, that within-group discussion is not necessary for discontinuity effects. Separated group members make more competitive choices when they merely anticipate within-group discussion. 
However, a hot-sauce experiment showed that initial agressive inclinations of an individual can be amplifyed by group discussion, so participants in intergroup interactions allocated significantly more hot sauce than did those in interindividual interactions. 

All in all, it has been found, that group discussion can strengthen individual's opinions and influence their behaviors, but there is not much existing evidence about the mechanisms leading to the discontinuity effect. 

The reciprocity hypothesis entails two key postulates. The first one claims, that through within-group discussions, groups gain more rational insight into the structure of the Prisoner's Dilemma Game, than individuals. Secondly, this superior comprehension of the game leads to groups reciprocating the competitive or cooperative behavior of the other player to maximize long-term outcomes. 

Cooperation could be increased by heightened accountability and lessened anonymity of each individual (against identifiability effect). Creating a meaningful group identity by sorting employees into groups of similar interests can have long-term benefits for cooperation. Another method would be for the employees to see their departments or units as one, instead of single groups to expand group identity and inhibit schema-based distrust. 
A decrease in cooperation could be reached by strengthening the formation of groups. 

Intergroup biases can be positive for ingroup goals, interpersonal relationships and increased survival probability for the individual, amongst other benefits, but at the same time have negative effects due to discriminating mechanisms towards the outgroup, such as hostility and competition. Therefore, the “mixed blessing” refers to the ambiguity of the effects those biases have. 

In the trust game, the participants are investors and are either paired with a trustee from an ingroup, outgroup or an unclassified stranger (IV). The participants receive an endowment (monetary units) and get to decide how much to give to the trustee. This amount is tripled by the experimenter and then the trustee gets to decide, how much to give back to the investor. Maximized outcomes would be, if the investors transfers the entire amount and the trustee delivers half back. However, there is the risk of exploitation by the trustee. The dependent measure is, how much the participants gives to the trustee. Results have found, that participants tend to give more to IG member trustees. (inconsistent findings). 

The dictator game consists of two players: the dictator, which is the participant, and a recipient. The dictator gets an endowment and decides how much to give to the recipient (who has no influence on anything or can give anything back). The independent measure is whether the recipient is an ingroup member, outgroup member or an unclassified stranger. The dependent variable is, how much the dictator gives to the recipient. The results of  studies are quite inconsistent (Mostly, participants tend to give more to IG member, but there have also been no effects found).

According to the SIT, people self-categorize as belonging to a specific group in the presence of an outgroup (metacontrast principle), and because people are motivated to maintain a positive social identity, mere categorization initiates thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that attempt to positively differentiate the ingroup from the outgroup. This can be done by favouring/ cooperating with the ingroup.

According to the BGR perspective, because of generalized trust in ingroup members and the need to build a positive reputation among ingroup members, people cooperate with ingroup members more than with outgroup members and unclassified strangers. This leads to mechanisms of indirect reciprocity, in which group members feel the need to give back or cooperate, in order to maintain their trustworthy reputation.

According to the BGR perspective, ingroup members try to build and maintain a trustworthy reputation and expect the same from other ingroup members. This leads to a self-evident trustworthiness of ingroup members, which in turn builds generalized trust in the ingroup.
The SIT claims that only in the presence of an outgroup do social identity mechanisms, such as reputation building and trust, occur. 

Ingroup members have a depersonalized and generalized trust that other ingroup members, no matter who, will cooperate due to the system of indirect reciprocity. Every group member should be trustworthy and therefore cooperate or give back. This requires a long-term perspective, where repeated interactions with others are implicitly or explicitly possible.

According to SIT, the formation of social identity is based on the metacontrast principle, which means that ingroup favouritism requires intergroup comparisons and therefore the presence of an outgroup. The outgroup acts as a cue or trigger for social identity striving. When no outgroup is present, people should cooperate with ingroup members the same way as with unclassified strangers. 

The BGR perspective claims that in situations of mutual outcome interdependence, such as trust games and social dilemmas, there should be stronger intergroup discrimination behavior. Whereas in situations of no interdependece, such as the dictator game, there is a slight discrimination in favour of the ingroup, but it is not as strong. 
The theory also predicts, that there is more intergroup discrimination in simultaneaous cooperative decisons, such as social dilemmas, as in sequential cooperative decisions, such as the trust game. 

According to the BGR perspective, in situations of unilateral knowledge of the group membership, meaning only one person of the both knows about their group membership, there is no expectation that the person maintains their trustworthy reputation, therefore their noncooperative behavior can not affect their chance of being excluded from the group. So, cooperation is less likely in unilateral knowledge situations than in common knowledge situations, where the person is motivated to keep their positive reputation. 
In the SIT, the partner's knowledge of the own groupmembership does not affect intergroup discrimination or ingroup favouritism, since the goal is a positive social identity, which can be reached via ingroup favouritism regardless of the partner's knowledge of one's group membership. 

The SIT claims that there should be no difference in intergroup discrimination when faced with an ingroup member or unclassified stranger, in contrast to the BGR perspective, which states that there should be more intergroup discrimination with an ingroup member. (SIT: only when faced with outgroup intergroup discriminatio mechanisms).
Furthermore, the BGR perspective claims that there is a stronger effect for intergroup discrimination in social dilemma situations, than SIT does. 
Additionally, in SIT the partner's knowledge of ones group membership does not affect intergroup discrimination behavior, while accroding to the BGR perspective, unilateral knowledge leads to less intergroup discrimination. 

The BGR perspective is supported by the findings, since cooperation varies between ingroup members and unclassified strangers, so intergroup discrimination can occur in the absence of an outgroup, which stands in contrast to the metacontrast principle included in the SIT. The reputation builiding aspect was also supported by findings in the dictator games, where people gave more to ingroup members, when others were watching. 

When taking the predictions of the BGR perspective into account, it could be helpful to try to avoid common knowledge of a group membership, ergo create unilateral knowledge of group membership in an organization, so that ingroup favouritism is not as strong. 
Another mentioned possibility might be direct reciprocity. If the possibility for direct reciprocity exists, cues of a partner's group membership become less important and people rely more on how the interaction partner will behave. 

Dissent can help understanding another person's perspective more clearly (perspective taking), which has been shown in a study where participants read a moral dilemma and consecutively discussed it with a confederate. Either the confederate was of a different opinion (controversy condition) or the same opinion (no-controversy condition). Measured was how accurate participants understood the other person's perspective (choosing arguments out of a list, they think the confederate would have chosen). The results were, that participants from the controversy condition group chose the arguments from the list more accurately and therefore understood the confederate's perspective better. Therefore, dissent might lead to more accurate perspective taking of the other person.

Dissent can lead to people resisting conformity as has been found in a study where participants where supposed to judge a series of multiple slides for color and brightness. In reality all slides were blue. In the majority condition 80% of previous confederates judged the slides as green, 20% as blue, so the majority showed dissent. In the minority condition, 20% saif the slides were green, 80% said they were blue, so the minority dissented. In a control group, no information was given. Each participant was then paired with a confederate who answered first and always said the slides were green. Measured was then, how many asociations the participants could find for the words blue and green. Participants who were exposed to minority dissent gave more associations, ergo they showed more creative behavior. Therefore, it can be concluded, that minority dissent enhances creativity and performance, regardless of whether the minority is correct or not. 

In a study with hidden profile (hidden information), members of a group were each given part of an information in a way that none of them could know the best solution for the problem at hand on their own. Via group discussion, they have to figure out the hidden profile. Generally, groups in this paradigm were not very successful in solving the hidden profile, but when there was dissent among the group members, they were able to make better decisions than consent groups. So, in cases where the best choice is not evident at the beginning, group decision quality benefits from dissent

"Hidden profiles" are dual or multiple-alternative group decision tasks in which the information about the decision alternatives is distributed among the group members in such a way, that no member can detect the best alternative on the basis of his or her individual information set. In a group discussion they try to figure out what the hidden information is, so what the best decision for the task is.

The two mediators are the intensity of a discussion (longer, more information exhange, more generated arguments--> the more intense, the better the performance) and discussion diversion, meaning a greater openness to new and inconsistent information.

Minority dissent facilitates flexible and divergent thinking among majority members, while in majority dissent situations, people tend to think more convergent and less flexible. 

One situational factor is the unanimity decision rule, according to which all members have to agree to the solution. In this case, minority opinions matter, more arguments are exchanged and there is overall more satisfaction with the final decision. 
Another factor is the possibility participation. If group member's opinions are heard and able to make a difference, there is more motivation to participate and express dissent. 
Additionally, if there is dialectical leadership present, meaning that the leader is open to dissent and encourages ideas that express alternatives and counter the current solution, the decision is higher in quality. 
Finally, critical norms, which are defined as a common understanding in groups that independence and critical thoughts are important, members feel more free to express their dissent, since they are not seen as disloyal by their co-members. 

There are two dialectical decision techniques, which could be used in organizations to mimic dissent. One would be the devil's advocacy, where one person is assigned to criticize proposals made by the group as authentic and substantial as possible. 
Another one would be the dialectical inquiry, where ciriticisms and counterproposals are made and then discussed. 
Generally though, real dissent has a stronger effect than a mimicked one, so another possibility would be to create quite diverse groups. 

One factor could be that people are generally motivated to claim as much as is reasonably possible for oneself. Therefore, they try to gain more responsibility, to justify larger claim later. 
Another factor could be the egocentric bias in the cognitive availability of information. It basically says that it is much easier for people to remember their own inputs than those of their partner, since they are always present at their own contributions, but not at their partner's. Even if we are aware of another person's contribution, we don't perceive it as as rich or deep as our own. 
Furthermore, people are motivated to enhance their self-esteem, this can be done by forming the belief, that the person themselves is the primary agent in joint tasks. 
 

Findings showed that married couples tend to overestimate not only their positive contributions (cleaning etc.) but also their negative ones (who leaves more dirty dishes behind). The magnitude of the overestimation was also only weakly correlated with the desirability of the activity. Therefore, the enhancement of self-esteem can not be the only motivator. 

People desire proportional fairness in the allocation of responsibility. If a group is assigned with the task of preparing a presentation and all members of the group are graded equally, one or more of the members might feel unjustly treated because they perceived their contributions to be bigger or more important than the other one's. This might lead to an interpersonal conflict.

Another example would be regarding the "illusion of transparency". It describes the tendency for people to overestimate the clarity with which they have sent certain signals of their state of mind or mood. For instance, in a romantic relationship, one partner might feel they signalled quite clearly that they wanted some attention, but the other partner does not react to these subliminal signs. Therefore, the partner sending the signals might feel overlooked or ignored, which could cause "bad blood" or conflicts. 

One approach to overcome biased responsibility allocation is to change the differential availability of people's personal contributions. This can be done by not asking the person about the percentage of their own contributions, but about the percentage of the other person's contributions. This leads to more focus on the contribution of the other party, and the person who has been asked the questions then tends to allocate more responsibility to the other person. 

The “spotlight effect” means that people overestimate the extent to which their appearance and behavior are noticed, evaluated and remembered by others. People assume that their actions, because they command so much of their own attention, are likely to occupy the attention of others as well.
One example would be if a person goes to a restaurant by themselves and is afraid that other people might think that the person is lonely, or that they stare at them extensively.

Social phobia and social anxiety entail a heightened fear of other people's attention on one's appearence and behaviors, which are encompassed in the spotlight effect.
Another mental disorder might be paranoia, which is assoicated with a higher sense of self-consciousness. People with this disorder perceive themselves as a target  for other people's attention or directed behavior (self-as-target bias).

The illusion of transparency refers to the overestimation of the clarity of one's own internal states for others.
One example would be a taste-test experiment, where participants got 5 drinks. They were told that one of those drinks tastes foul, but they did not know which one. They were then instructed to drink all five drinks on front of another person and that they should not show in their faces, if they had caught the foul or a normal drink. 
Most of the participants thought that it could be clearly seen on their face, when they had the foul drink in comparison to a normal one. 

The illusion of transoarency is an exaggerated sense of the clarity of one’s attempted communication and can cause interpersonal difficulties. For example, if a person overestimates the clarity with which she or he has sent certain signals they are more likely to evaluate the partners’ failure to take appropriate actions as an evidence of moodiness or lack of interests. Those unrealistic expectations that one partner is able to read one’s mind can cause misunderstanding and in turn conflict.