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/
Having had identified the effects of different types of interdependence on outcomes in groups and nations in his dissertation research, Deutsch began to wonder about the conditions that would generate these types of interdependence. In other words, having shown that cooperation leads to more constructive group processes and outcomes then competition, he wondered what conditions would lead groups to cooperate versus compete in the first place? Here, Deutsch turned his full attention to the study of conflict, as he saw it providing the ideal conditions to study “mixed-motive” (cooperative and competitive) situations, which had the potential to move in either a cooperative or competitive direction. Read the full article here at Psychology Today—The Crude Law of Social Relations: What Leads to Cooperation and Competition in the First Place?