The Strategic Mind
Overview
As you move into this module on the strategic mind, it is possible that students (and you) will have a reaction along the lines of “Finally! This is what conflict is really about! Why didn’t we just start the class here (and why are we bothering with anything else)?”
This potential reaction may arise because law and other professional schools increasingly focus on a Western cultural orientation toward “problem solving” in conflict work. The theories we examine in this module reflect this ideological and cultural foundation – a standpoint that may already be familiar or comfortable.
Here are several points to keep in mind as you guide students through this module:
- Students might forget that this week’s perspective is just like all the others in this class: one of many “mosaic tiles.” As a perspective, the strategic mind is neither more (nor less) than other theory-based perspectives that offer their own different insights into conflict. Some students may feel as if they have finally come home to a deeper or more comfortable “truth” about people and conflict. If so, it may be because this particular perspective is already part of their framework. Thus, this week’s readings simply reinforce this preexisting view. As Nealon and Giroux might say (a supplemental reading from the module on perspectivism), the theories that focus on behavior and strategic thinking are so like the “air” many of students breathe that its underlying assumptions become invisible, taken for granted, “common sense,” and thus relatively unexamined.
- One reason this module is placed at this point in the course is so students will have been exposed to several other perspectives before they come to this one, hopefully de-centering this week’s perspective and locating it as one within a larger and more complex framework of multiple perspectives.
- One risk you may observe with your students in this module is that, because it might be familiar, students may assume they already know understand it and, thus, not read as carefully as they do with other perspectives. Or, in the alternative, they read it somewhat more selectively, resonating more easily with the principles that most reinforce what they already know and believe, while not paying as much attention to the nuances and differences found elsewhere in the readings – classic confirmation bias.
All of these risks can be overcome by remaining aware of them. By this point in class, students will have arrived at a point where they have a growing collection of different ways to think about conflict. They may be more ready to think about the strategic mind within this larger context – to step back, look at how the different perspectives inter-relate, and begin to see the larger, more complex picture of conflict.
Readings and supplemental resources
Primary readings:
Perspectives on Conflict, chapter 6 – The Strategic Mind
Supplemental resources:
Learning theory
Kanfer, FH & Phillips, JS (1970). The Behavioral Learning Model in Clinical Psychology. In Learning Foundations of Behavioral Therapy. NY: John Wyley & Sons, pp. 51-91.
Social Confrontation Episode
Newell, W. and Stutman, R. Negotiating Confrontation: The Problematic Nature of Initiation and Response, in Research on Language and Social Interaction, Vol. 23, 1989/90: 139-162.
Social psychological theories
Sorenson, R., Morse, E., and Savage, G. A Test of Motivations Underlying Choice of Conflict Strategies in the Dual-concern Model, Vol. 10, 1999: 25-44.
Link to TEDTalk
Classroom Handouts
Social Confontation Episode (PDF)
Classroom Activities, Discussion Prompts, and Assignments
Dynamic Negotiating Approach Diagnostic (DYNAD) (Link to SSRN)
Win as Much as You Can! (PDF)