Source: Image of Neighborhood, Public Domain, http://mrg.bz/N0mLIc
Hi. I'm Julie Tietz, and welcome to "Conflict Resolution-- Putting the Pieces Together." Today, we're going to talk about causes and consequences and how we can use conflict mapping to separate out causes and consequences of conflict for parties.
When we're talking about causes and consequences of conflict, we're talking about those events that initiate the conflict, so the causes. And also, those responses to another event in a conflict. So as we keep on going through the conflict, after the first cause of conflict, we see the consequences becoming the next layer of the conflict. And these consequences then in turn can become another cause as the conflict escalates. And we call this adding of layers to conflict as a conflict spiral.
And so again, the conflict spiral is a pattern of escalation in a conflict in which consequences of behaviors at one stage of the conflict then become the causes of behaviors at the next stage. So here, we're talking about at one stage, we have the cause. And the reaction, then, is the consequence, which then in turn can also become another cause as we go through the conflict. So again, we're adding on the layers. Think of it as a layer cake.
We keep on going and going and adding and adding as we are moving through the conflict-- as it escalates and intensifies. And when parties are going through conflict, they don't move in a rigid sequence, and so this causes a blurring of the lines of the causes and consequences. And so as the conflict continues and moves forward, the causes and consequences become blurred, and the parties have different perceptions on these causes and consequences of the conflict. And because of this, it can be really hard to distinguish the causes and consequences of the conflict.
So let's look at an example. Let's say we have a neighborhood dispute, and it starts off as a parking issue. There is an unstated rule about who parks where within the neighborhood, and that has been disrupted. And so one party becomes upset about this disruption in parking, and then acts in another way that is disruptive to the neighborhood, such as throwing loud parties at night.
And then the other neighbors are disturbed by this conflict within the disturbance of noise within the neighborhood, and then acts in another way as a reaction to that noise level. And so you can see, we are adding the layers of the causes and consequences of this neighborhood dispute, which then becomes further escalated and intensified by other causes and consequences. So you can see how this complex spiral can continue and eventually blur the lines of the causes and consequences of this neighborhood dispute.
And I mentioned earlier that it can be hard to distinguish the causes and consequences of conflict. And so a good way to go about distinguishing these causes and consequences is through some diagramming and conflict mapping. And we may choose to do this separate from our big conflict map so we can really get a hold on these causes and consequences. So here's just one example that you may choose to use in diagramming out the causes and consequences-- so listing out some of the issues.
So going to our neighborhood dispute, we can put some parking. We can put the noise and other issues that have occurred within this neighborhood, so we can really distinguish the causes and consequences and get to the root of the conflict and really help in mapping out the whole big picture of the conflict for this particular neighborhood or other conflict that we may be working with.
Let's take a look at our key points on causes and consequences. We know that a cause and consequence of a conflict are those events that initiate or are responses to a conflict that occur. And so those are the causes. And as we keep on adding layers of causes and consequences of conflict, we then create what we call a conflict spiral.
And so this is what occurs when we have a cause at one level, and then the consequence happens, which then in turn creates another cause at the next level of the conflict. And as we go through this conflict, the lines of causes and consequences can be blurred, because parties don't act in a rigid sequence during a conflict. And in order to help parties distinguish out causes and consequences, a diagram can be really helpful for our use in putting out those issues and the causes and consequences of those issues that have occurred, which can be separate from our overall conflict map, where we can then really solidify those causes and consequences for the parties.
Here are your key terms before we go. Feel free to pause and look at them a little bit closer. Thanks for taking the time out, and I can't wait to catch you again next time.