The Interrelationship of Bias and Conflict: Addressing Bias in Conflict and Dispute Resolution Settings

The Interrelationship of Bias and Conflict

Addressing Bias in Conflict and Dispute Resolution Settings

By John Livingood

©2007 John M. Livingood

This book was originally published as an article, titled Addressing Bias in Conflict and Dispute Resolution Settings, and published in American Arbitration Association’s Dispute Resolution Journal, November 2007 and, later, published in the online Juris’ Dispute Resolution Journal Vol.62, No. 4, 2007.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Learned Bias

Incident-Driven Bias

Process-Driven Bias

Attributional Bias

Four Core Biases Affecting Judgment in Conflict Situations

Ameliorating Bias

Reframing the Dispute and Strategic Creativity

Education in Communication Techniques

Relationship Building

Developing and Sharing of Information

Perspective Reframing

Policing Communications

Reality Testing

Mediator Evaluations and Proposals

Separating the Parties

Face Saving

Conclusion

Endnotes

About the Author

Other ebooks by Author

Preface

This book is based on the article, Addressing Bias in Conflict and Dispute Resolution Settings that I wrote and was first published in American Arbitration Association’s Dispute Resolution Journal in 2007 and, later, by the on-line Juris’ Dispute Resolution Journal Vol.62, No. 4, 2007.

I chose this ebook format for publishing in order to give a wider dissemination of the article and have tried to maintain the general formatting as originally published with minor non-substantive alterations to better suit this means of publication.

This article was conceived as a result of a number of years as an advocate in labor-management negations and, later, as a mediation practitioner in resolving work place issues, both in collective bargaining settings and in non-collective bargaining settings. The specific genesis point for the article occurred when I was facilitating, not mediating, a process to reach a collective bargaining agreement. During the process, the labor negotiating team, lead by a seasoned negotiator, had dutifully listened to managements concerns