CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

150 SCHULZ-HARDT, MOJZISCH, AND VOGELGESANG
Dissent anD ConfliCt: Do they faCilitate Creativity anD PerforManCe?
In this section, we will consider three lines of evidence indicating that
dissent stimulates creativity and performance. When we speak of “dissent,”
we mean any situation where a person is confronted with one or
more other persons’ opinions, and at least one of these opinions is different
from his or her own opinion. Hence, if one had not already made
up one’s mind about an issue, and if one were now confronted with two
persons’ opinions on that issue that contradict each other, this would not
be a case of dissent according to our definition (e.g., for a treatment of
such situations, see Erb & Bohner, 2001). However, if one already had an
opinion on that particular issue, the situation would constitute a case of
dissent because necessarily at least one of the other persons’ opinions contradicts
one’s own opinion. In contrast, if these two persons had the same
opinion as one has, we will call this “consent.”
First Example: Dissent and Perspective Taking
Imagine you are a member of a management board and have to decide
whether the contract of a manager should be extended or not. While having
lunch at the cafeteria, you start a conversation about this issue with another
member of the management board. It soon turns out that both of you agree on
extending the manager’s contract. In the evening, you discuss this issue with
another member of the management board in your company’s fitness center.
This time, the member of the management board is in favor of letting the
manager go—that is, she contradicts your opinion. What do you think—in
which of these two situations would you be better able to accurately understand
the other person’s reasoning and underlying motives? Would you better
understand the one who agrees or the one who disagrees with you?
This question was addressed in a seminal experiment conducted by
Tjosvold and Johnson (1977). In the first part of the experiment, participants
were asked to read a moral dilemma. The dilemma involved a
school principal who had to decide whether to allow a student newspaper,
which students appreciated but parents disliked, to continue. Participants
were asked to indicate what course of action the school principal should
take. Later on, they discussed the moral dilemma with another ostensible
participant who was actually a confederate of the experimenter. The confederate
was trained to consistently present arguments that reflected his
or her primary interest, which, in this case, was to maintain social order
through respect for rules, the law, authority, and the status quo. In the
no-controversy condition, the confederate took the same position as the participant
as to how the moral dilemma should be solved. In the controversy
condition, the confederate took the position opposite from the participant.
The dependent variable was the accuracy with which participants
understood the perspective of the confederate, that is, his or her primary