CONFLICT MANAGEMENT The Psychology of conflict and conflict ...

256 PRUITT
reacting harshly to each other’s unacceptable behavior. However, the
main source of intractable conflict lies in structural changes—enduring
transformations to the parties, their relationship, and/or the surrounding
community—that result from heavy escalation and encourage further
heavy escalation (Pruitt & Kim, 2004). What happens is that some of the
conditions that were discussed in the prior section are exacerbated by
heavy escalation and do not return to their former state (Pruitt & Kim,
2004; Pruitt & Olczak, 1995).
An example of a structural change is that escalation can encourage
group mobilization on one or both sides of a conflict. People become more
identified with their group, solidarity increases, and militant leaders gain
a wider audience, urging hostile action against the opposing group. The
result is more escalation, and more persistent escalation because such transformations
are not easily reversed.
Another example is the deterioration of relationships that often accompanies
escalation. Negative attitudes and perceptions, hostility and
distrust set in, and bonds between the parties are destroyed. The antagonists
stop identifying with each other, drop their membership in common
groups, and sever their dependence on each other. Communication
between them breaks down. Again, such transformations tend to endure,
which encourages persistent escalation.
When the parties to a conflict are groups, the destruction of bonds is
called “community polarization”—a movement away from crosscutting
structure and toward overlapping structure (Pruitt & Kim, 2004). As escalation
continues, community polarization often deepens, with formerly
neutral individuals and groups taking sides with one or the other antagonist.
Potential mediators disappear, norms that protect each side from the
other’s aggression are viewed as outdated, and the antagonists find increasing
social support for escalated behavior against each other. Communities
often have difficulty finding their way back from such heavy polarization,
and escalation becomes a permanent feature of the landscape.
Perhaps the most ominous kind of structural change in intergroup
conflict is the development of militant subgroups that have an agenda of
defeating or destroying the opponent. An example would be the revival
of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1970, which occurred after a series
of clashes between nationalists and unionists in Northern Ireland. This
group of about 500 men developed the goal of ejecting the British government
from Northern Ireland and used guerilla tactics in an effort to
accomplish this goal. Similar groups were organized on the other side of
the conflict. The result was a heavily escalated conflict that lasted for more
than 25 years and in which more than 3,700 people were killed out of a
population of 1.5 million (Moloney, 2002).
A similar but less lethal structural change occurred in 1970 on the
author’s campus after a clash between students and campus police (Pruitt
& Gahagan, 1974; Pruitt & Kim, 2004). A strike committee of about 400 students
was organized. The goals of this committee were to close down the