At school, at home, on the street, at work, on social media, with friends, with family, with nature, with ourselves… We are in communication at every moment and everywhere. In this situation, of course, it is impossible not to have conflicts. We actually observe many of the items we will discuss about communication conflicts every day. However, the mathematician Frank Harary was the one who thought to bring this to the literature, and who handled the Graph Theory in mathematics in the field of communication. So what are these communication conflicts? Let’s try to explain by simplifying and exemplifying.
Communication Conflicts
1-Active Conflict
According to the content of this article, it can be inferred that people we see as bad, people we don’t like or dislike, no matter what they say, don’t mean anything, or that we find their every idea, their every expression bad. Most people have detected this at least once. It is said that a negative history with certain people is likely to trigger this. If we have a negative past with a person, we can get angry with them even if they express something we think today, according to this type of conflict.
2-Passive Conflict
In passive conflict, another conflict identified by Harary and Batell (1981), ‘resentment’ and ‘avoidance’ play a role. We know that people who resent each other do not communicate. In shyness, when inviting someone to a place, holding back because of the possibility of rejection, or when the other party waits for an invitation and does not say it because he/she believes that it would be shameful if he/she says it, causes miscommunication and the invitation does not materialize.
3-Existence Conflict
Here there is a conflict arising from each individual’s focus on their own message. Harary and Batell exemplified Cervantes’ famous hero Don Quixote in this regard. The fact that people are closed to Don Quixote’s messages and that Don Quixote cannot adequately evaluate the notifications coming from his environment creates a conflict of existence between Don Quixote and society.
4-Total Rejection
We can understand this article in terms of fanaticism. ‘The biggest team is our team’ is a slogan that fans of all teams chant for their team, regardless of whether it is so or not. Or if an artist refuses to accept any criticism of his work and considers it flawless. Or if a pessimistic person sees nothing but negativity in their life and themselves, no matter how many positive or nice compliments you give them about life or themselves, they reject these compliments. Total rejection is incompatible with elaboration, questioning, thinking, asking questions.
5-Prejudiced Conflict
Here, people have a preconceived notion about a certain issue before discussing it, and they persistently defend it. It is frequently seen in debates and discussion programs. When the worker negotiates a raise with the boss, since both sides have a preconceived judgment from their own perspective, the worker’s livelihood problem and the boss’s cost and budget problem will be their own justifications. It is very difficult for the two sides to convince the other side of their own problems.
6-Conflict of Intensity
It is conflict with a modicum of détente. The parties have a point of intersection, but one side is definitely sharper.
7-Partial Perception Conflict
You can easily detect this in yourself or in many people around you. Sometimes when you give advice to your friends, they may prefer to hear only the advice they want. ‘ Will you go on vacation for me for five days? ‘ and ‘ Will you go to work for me for five days? ‘ will not be heard with the same reaction. This triggers the brain to work ‘as it pleases’.
8-Detention Conflict
This is what happens when a person fully understands the message from the source but conveys it incompletely. This is similar to the situation when professors and teachers fail to convey all of what they know to their students. This situation can be seen especially in malicious rumors. It can also be the other way around. For example, in a bank, if a customer fails to convey his/her request or conveys it incompletely, but the banker understands which transaction he/she wants to make, the opposite situation will happen.
Considering that communication conflicts are in our lives more than communication and cause many problems both in our own world, in our country and in the world, it will be realized how serious it is. Because communication and psychology are very interconnected. Of course, we cannot communicate with everyone in the same way, because every person, every event, every place, in short, everything finds a different psychological response in the mind. Nevertheless, there may be areas where we can create a common language while preserving our identity. Although in traditional societies, communication and systems are formed from language to language or through customs and traditions without much questioning, it may be possible to avoid being caught in the vortex of the uniformizing thought system with our own efforts.
