The world lost an intellectual giant this year when Morton Deutsch—an eminent psychologist, Columbia University professor, mentor extraordinaire, and one of the founders of the field of conflict resolution—passed away in March at the age of 97. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Deutsch remained committed to promoting a more just, peaceful and sustainable world. In honor of his life and legacy, our Director Peter T. Coleman has selected a series of ten of Deutsch’s most significant scientific to highlight in a series of weekly blog posts, running on Psychology Today and Huffington Post.
The first of these weekly posts was published on Thursday, August 10, and a new blog will be posted each week through Thursday, October 12. Below you can find the link to this week’s blog—you can also check back here for links on future blogs, and remember to follow us on social media for more of our updates!
Finally to read more about Deutsch’s life and work, please visit: http://icccr.tc.columbia.edu/founder-morton-deutsch/
Conflict makes most people anxious, as they fear it may overwhelm or destroy. As a result, it has long suffered a negative reputation. When asked to free-associate about conflict, most people first cite anger, frustration, hurt, struggle, violence and war. Likewise, most conflict scholars and practitioners tend to view conflict as something to contain, reduce or put an end to.
However, Mort Deutsch realized early in his career that most conflicts present us with both problems and opportunities (known as mixed-motives), and so set out to debunk the myth that all conflict is bad. Of course some conflicts can become quite painful and destructive, but these tend to be rare. More often, conflicts present us with chances to solve problems and bring about necessary changes, to learn more about ourselves and others, and to innovate—to go beyond what we already know and do. However, it is easy to forget this because the conflicts that stick in our memory tend to be the bad ones. Read the full article here at Psychology Today—Understanding Conflict: How Conflict Is Like Sex