Coleman on Deutsch’s Contributions: Why conflict is like sex, and what makes it go well — or not
The late Morton Deutsch, the TC psychologist who helped found the field of conflict resolution. In the third and fourth installments of his ongoing series on the contributions the late Teachers College psychologist Morton Deutsch, Peter Coleman, Professor of Psychology & Education, discusses Deutsch’s theories of why conflict is like sex (it can be done alone, with others or in groups, and it can can go really well or terribly wrong, but either way it’s a fundamental part of life), what makes for positive outcomes when conflict occurs (it turns out that the nature of the group that it occurs in — competitive or cooperative — has a lot to do with it). Check out The Five Percent, Coleman's blog on the Psychology Today website. Be sure to read Coleman's two previous blogs on the site, on Deutsch’s ideas for preventing nuclear war and what he saw as the key elements of cooperation and competition.
