The resolution of conflicts of interests and ideologies in interreligious decision-making groups : a dynamic simulation of community relations

The present study was conducted to investigate resolution of conflicts of interest and conflicts of ideology in the interreligious community. A laboratory simulation was designed to represent the ideologies, interests and history of conflicts between two interreligious social service agencies which are currently involved in prison ministry. Participants in the simulation were asked to play the role of a representative of one of the groups and to negotiate with the representative of the other group about programs to be designed and implemented within the prison system. The independent variables, conflict of interest and conflict of ideology, were presented in a scenario which depicted the present negotiations as a point in time, preceeded by prior conflicts with prospects for future encounters between the groups. Conflict of interest was defined by cross-cutting interests involving previous experiences in combining resources such as money and community influence to work jointly on prison projects. High conflict of interest resulted from low cross-cutting interests, whereas low conflict of interest resulted from high cross-cutting interests during past intergroup relations. Ideological positions of the groups were described in terms of social change and system maintenance philosophies with each group representing one of these positions. The social change philosophy stated that change is a product of humans reacting to social problems and emphasizes that society should be changed whenever necessary to meet the needs of the people. The system maintenance ideology proposed that change occurs naturally within the system, and that human intervention for change is a disruptive force. To manipulate conflict of Ideology, these opposing ideological positions were presented in degrees of polarization. Polarized groups took extreme positions on the ideological issue and had a high degree of within-group solidarity. Non-polarized groups assumed a moderate position on the ideological issue and had a low degree of within-group solidarity. High conflict of ideology was operationalized as an increasing extremeness of ideological position and within group solidarity that occurred during the groups' past experience. Low conflict of ideology was operationalized as a decreasing extremeness of ideological position and within group homogeneity during the past experience. The hypotheses were: 1. Groups which have high conflict ideology and high conflict of interest would have the greatest difficulty in reaching conflict resolution. 2. Groups which have high conflict of ideology and low conflict of interest would have less difficulty in reaching conflict resolution than would be the case for groups in hypothesis one. 3. Groups which have low conflict of ideology and high conflict of interest would have less difficulty in reaching conflict resolution than would be the case for groups in hypotheses one and two. 4. Groups which have low conflict of ideology and low conflict of interest would have the least amount of difficulty in reaching conflict resolution. It was also hypothesized that female negotiators would be less competitive and more likely to reach compromises than would the male negotiators. The participants in the simulation were 48 male and 48 female volunteers from an introductory psychology course subject pool at the University of Houston. Prior to the study, each participant completed a brief questionnaire indicating whether the social change or system maintenance ideology more closely represented his or her own beliefs and the degree to which the belief was held. The results of this questionnaire were used to assign participants to represent the group whose ideology most closely matched his or her own. The participants were asked to read the simulation materials which described 1) both of the groups' interests and ideologies in terms of the history of interaction, 2) the position of his or her own group and the opponent's group, 3) the programs preferred by both groups, 4) the role of the groups' representatives as negotiators, and 5) the agenda for the negotiation session. After reading these materials the participants were asked to negotiate a decision about which programs would receive their financial and administrative support. Following the negotiation session, the participants completed a post questionnaire and were debriefed by the experimenter. The results of the study indicated a significant and pervasive effect of conflict of interest. A high conflict of interest significantly increased the amount of time spent in negotiations, decreased the total amount of many allocated to the projects, resulted in more deviations from a equal split of the funds and produced more unresolved conflicts. Participants in the high conflict of interest conditions perceived conflict as defeat and as a win-lose proposition rather than a problem-solving debate. They also were less satisfied with the outcome of the negotiations, felt their positions were more difficult to defend than were their opponents' positions and rated the session as highly emotional, idealistic, hostile, competitive and futile. Conflict of ideology affected only the negotiators' commitment to the groups' programs and the perception of similarity between his or her own position and the assigned one. The sex of the negotiator affected only the perceptions of the opponent with females rating the opponent as more emotional and compromising than did the male negotiators. Thus, for the present simulation of interreligious bargaining and negotiations, conflict of interest was shown to be the most significant factor in affecting conflict resolution and the accompanying perceptual set which mediated the appropriate transaction.