Conflict management: do we overestimate disagreement?
Managers rarely intervene in a conflict without already having a view of what divides the parties. The management question is specific: before seeking a compromise, how can we check whether the disagreement actually concerns what each party assumes it does?
What the literature establishes
Robert J. Robinson, Dacher Keltner, Andrew Ward and Lee Ross (1995, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) show that, in the controversies studied, participants overestimate the differences between their own interpretation and that of the opposing side. The authors link this phenomenon to “naive realism”: people tend to regard their own perception as an objective reading of the situation. The perceived gap is therefore not a reliable measure of the actual gap.
When opposing interests become an assumption
Leigh Thompson and Reid Hastie (1990, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes) show that negotiators can enter an exchange with inaccurate judgements about the other party's interests, notably by assuming opposition where compatibility exists. These perceptual errors are associated with the quality of the agreements reached. The relevant mechanism is not merely a lack of information: it is also a prior interpretation that shapes what the information means.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that conflict disappears as soon as the parties understand each other better. These studies do not establish that: correcting an inaccurate representation may reduce apparent disagreement without removing a genuine incompatibility. Checking positions therefore does not replace adjudication; it helps avoid adjudicating an opposition that is partly imaginary. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These studies examine controversies and negotiation settings that do not reproduce all the constraints of a workplace team. They cannot quantify the proportion of workplace conflicts attributable to overestimated disagreement. In practice, simply asking “have you understood the other person?” remains insufficient: an affirmative answer does not verify the accuracy of that understanding.
A practical check in Sion
As part of the “Gestion du conflit” programme at SHR — Swiss Human Resources, an exercise in Sion could address a scheduling disagreement in hydropower, healthcare, viticulture or alpine tourism. Before the discussion, each party records their own position on the points requiring a decision and the position they attribute to the other; these formulations are then compared with the stated positions, without immediately seeking a compromise. The measure is the proportion of attributed positions that the person concerned corrects, retaining both the original wording and the correction so that the result can be verified. This indicator does not measure conflict resolution, but the share of presumed disagreement that needs to be reformulated before a decision is made. To go further: explore the Conflict Management training in Sion in the canton of Valais, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Conflict Management in Sion
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