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Conflict
Whether it involves competition for the only bathroom in the
house or a war based on revolutionary Conflict occurs when one person's plans, needs, or goals are perceived as competing with another person's plans, needs, or goals. In the American West of the 1800s, for example, the needs of farmers to build fences to protect their crops placed them in direct competition with ranchers, who needed to leave the land open for cattle grazing. In general, competition can be broken into two categories. Pure competition is the familiar form of competition in which one
person's gain is necessarily another person's loss. Most
athletic In contrast, non-zero-sum competitions are competitions where one person's gain does not necessarily come at the expense of another. Solutions can sometimes be found in which both sides win or both sides lose. When a new mystery novel rockets to the top of the bestseller list, for example, it may actually help the sales of other mystery novels. As a result, non-zero-sum competitions typically give rise to a mix of competitive and cooperative motives. Non-zero-sum competitions are of special interest to psychologists for two reasons. First, although pure competition dominates the world of games, non-zero-sum competition dominates the real world. In war, for example, there are rarely clear winners and clear losers. Each side wins some things and loses others. Second, the mixed motives that accompany non-zero-sum competitions frequently create social traps in which the rational pursuit of short-term individual goals leads to collective failure. Let's look at an example Every spring, our favorite PBS station asks viewers to send in money to keep the station going for another year. How should viewers respond? On the one hand, if no one sends money, the station will go off the air and everyone will lose. On the other hand, if a few people send in enough money to keep the station on the air, everyone else can keep their money and watch for free. What happens all too often is that the station fails to reach its goals. As a result, programs are dropped, staff are cut, and the station limps toward the next drive. Why is it so hard for our public television station to raise enough money? It is hard because raising money for public television creates a social trap in which the individual's pursuit of his or her personal interest results in a disaster for the group as a whole. When it comes to giving money to public television, it is in everyone's personal financial interest to give as little as possible. After all, what difference will a $75 donation make to a station with a seven-figure budget? But notice that if everyone acts on his or her individual interest, the community loses. Pollution, deforestation, overpopulation, and even chronically low blood supplies at the Red Cross all have their origins in the pitting of the immediate needs of the individual against the common good. In each case, the rational pursuit of short-term individual goals leads to long-term collective disaster.
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principles,
competitions
and board games involve pure competition, with tug-of-war being
perhaps the best example. In tug-of-war, every inch that one team
gains comes at the expense of the other team. Pure competition
is sometimes called zero-sum competition because the gains
and losses across the two sides add up to zero.
