7 Types of Conflict
Having discussed different approaches to social identity and how they relate to intergroup bias and conflict, we can start teasing apart different types of conflict. Tajfel and Turner (1979) distinguishes explicit (AKA institutionalized) conflict from implicit conflict as well as objective from subjective conflict.
When we think of conflict, we most often think of explicit conflict:
“explicit conflict is legitimized and institutionalized by rules or norms”
(Hewstone & Cairns, 2001, p. 326)
In explicit conflicts, you can categorize behaviour into instrumental behaviour and non-instrumental behaviour. Instrumental behaviour are those behaviours that are used to help the ingroup win, for instance, a competition. If you think of nothing other than a group’s desire to win, then you are thinking of instrumental behaviour. Instrumental behaviour could be pushing or voting for or supporting anti-immigration laws. Non-instrumental behaviours are those that discriminate against outgroups, like using racial slurs.
If explicit conflicts are legitimized and institutionalized by rules and norms, then implicit conflicts refer to conflicts that occur without institutionalized rules and norms. These conflicts occur where “differentiations of all kinds are made between groups by their members although, on the face of it, there are no “reasons” for these differentiations to occur” (Tajfel & Turner, 1979, p. 47). In explicit conflict, the behaviour is done to increase the rewards of the ingroup whereas in implicit conflict, behaviours are performed that might reduce the reward for the ingroup, as long as it reduces the reward for the outgroup, more. A clear case of such a conflict was the Rwandan genocide.
Objective conflicts are those that happen over power, wealth, or territory. Objective conflicts have social psychological aspects to them, but largely are determined outside of psychology as require economic, political, and historical analyses. Subjective conflicts have a more direct psychological cause. Subjective conflicts involve attempts to establish positively valued distinctiveness (positive group self-esteem). While we make these distinctions, it is important to note that objective and subjective conflicts are often entwined and that the subjective component of a conflict can often last long after the objective conflict has been resolved. In extreme versions when subjective conflict outlives the objective conflict, it becomes what Deutsch (1973) refers to as a destructive conflict:
a conflict that lasts past its initial cause and continues long after the initial cause has become irrelevant
These conflicts are particularly difficult to deal with because of their subjective, symbolic, psychology (Cairns & Darby, 1998). An example of such a conflict is that of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the conflict with the First Nations here, in Canada. Political scientist, John Whyte (1990) speaks of the conflict in Northern Ireland in terms of a destructive conflict: “[The conflict in Northern Ireland] seems to go beyond what is required by a rational defence of the divergent interests which undoubtedly exist [between Catholics and Protestants]” (White, 1990, p. 94, cited in Hewstone & Cairns, 2001, pp. 235-236).
