You experience conflict on a daily basis, whether with a colleague, friend, or within yourself. Despite this, it is not entirely common for people to take an elective conflict resolution course. Why? The likely reason being that you have learned your methods from those that raised you and are “stuck in your ways”. This is a part of your belief system which can actually escalate a conflict or de-escalate it.

A belief system is a combination of your beliefs and assumptions which are the framework for how you see and understand the world around you. Beliefs are learned and adopted from family, culture, environment, teachers, and all other life experiences. They guide your behavior and can empower or limit you based on how rigid the belief system is and how open you are to new information. Change, or information contrary to your beliefs, is naturally resisted. This is not being close-minded; this is a natural response of the mind to attempt and maintain a consistent world view. However, if you are obstinate and unwilling to look at a new idea, that is being close-minded and is going to escalate almost any conflict involving change. Being open-minded to re-evaluating your beliefs is going to widely improve your outcome and allow conflicts involving beliefs to de-escalate faster. 

For some, confirmation bias has likely just pulled their attention away. This is also a natural occurrence. Confirmation bias is the search for, interpretation of, and remembering only information confirming pre-existing beliefs. It is the reason that when you hear, learn, or see something that you are all too happy about, such as a pregnant family member, a co-worker quitting creating an advancement opportunity, or your car making a noise, you start looking for any little thing that supports it. However, even with confirmation bias everyone is different in how they conclude what confirms or denies what they see, hear, or learn.

 For example, two people could hear that the 65 year-old manager of their department is retiring, creating a great opportunity. Both could be drawn to the opportunity and see, hear, and experience all the same things but still come to a completely different opinion as to what confirms the manager is retiring. Why? This is because of perception. Perception is the interpretation of events filtered through a belief system. One could have a family that has historically retired at 65 while the other could have a family that tends to work through the duration of their life despite constantly saying they were going to retire. In this case one is going to see the manager’s age as a confirmation of what they have heard while the other is likely not going to acknowledge age as a factor.

Another factor in this is individualism. Individualism is the prioritization of an individual’s goals and desires above those of others. Western culture is nearly a perfect example of this while other Eastern cultures are the exact opposite. When looking at the previous example, if each had a differing cultural background (one Western, one Eastern) and both lacked skills necessary to do the job well and properly support the team, their goals would be entirely different. Likely the Western employee would focus solely on their goal of getting the promotion while the Eastern employee would consider the effect their lack of specific skills would have on the goals of their team. Every part of an individual’s experience and background changes how one sees, interprets, and interacts with the world around them.

Power distance is another piece of this belief system puzzle. Power distance refers to how the power distribution in society is perceived and accepted. There are two distinct cultures of power, low-power culture and high-power culture. In low-power culture there is a great deal of advocacy for equality and participation in decision making. In high-power culture there is acceptance of unequal power distribution which leads to individuals being less likely to question authority and be less inclusive in decision making. For example, if there are two managers, one from high-power culture and one from low-power culture, the low-power culture manager is always seeking employee input while the high-power culture manager sees that as a sign of weakness. 

You may be asking why does any of this matter? Well, the short answer is that every day you are going to see these differences in beliefs and culture. They are going to be the foothold for conflict and, if tactful, conflict resolution. When you look at world events and more personally conflicts of everyday life, you can find some if not all of these differences are the basis for them. Though belief systems are the basis for the majority of conflicts, it is not something that can be blamed on the individual person. As mentioned earlier, a person’s belief system is learned from the world around them not created by informed decision making. With an understanding of this, it is easier to approach conflicts with empathy for the opposing side and see where even your own beliefs may need to be questioned. If beliefs are looked at through the same lens used to look at things like learned behavior and mental health, it becomes clearer that all beliefs are open to examination and should be constantly evolving and not fixed.

After taking a conflict resolution and sociology course, I have been able to link all of this together. It is clear how belief systems made of perceptions, culture, and experiences shape your individual world in very specific and different ways. Everyone sees things just a little differently. This is why there is so much conflict in the world today. You see things through your individual lens and tend not to take the time to see that the person you are in conflict with has distinct and valid reasons for their position just as you do. Instead of realizing that no one takes a position based purely on a preponderance of facts and evidence, you focus on the individual beliefs that you have developed through perceptions of experiences. Conflict and belief systems go hand in hand, and it is necessary that everyone look at the whole picture, not just their own personal beliefs.