Assignment 5

This week you will be examining the ways course concepts apply to your own life. For this week's assignment, please follow the steps below:

1. Go to this page, and look up the following terms: Conflict transformation, Values, Value differences, Positive sum situations, Win-lose, Win-win, and Zero-sum. Do your best to understand the difference between a zero-sum and a positive-sum situation. You may want to do some additional reading on your own or contact me with questions.
2. Examine your response to various conflicts in your life. A detailed questionnaire is posted below to help you discover more information.
3. Attempt to identify a conflict in your life that includes a zero-sum situation. Think about ways this could be transformed into a positive-sum situation. In a 1-2 page essay (double spaced), describe the conflict and discuss steps which might be taken to address it more productively.
4. You should feel welcome to write about any situation you like, but please do not feel obligated to include any information you are not comfortable sharing.

The following questions are taken/adapted from an exercise by Barbara Stanford, titled "Alternatives to Violence":

How do you usually handle conflicts?

1. Avoid the person?
2. Change the subject?
3. Try to understand the other person's point of view?
4. Try to turn the conflict into a joke?
5. Admit that you are wrong even if you do not believe you are?
6. Give in?
7. Apologize?
8. Try to find out specifically what you agree on and disagree on to narrow down the conflict?
9. Try to reach a compromise?
10. Pretend to agree?
11. Get another person to decide who is right?
12. Threaten the other person?
13. Fight it out physically?
14. Whine or complain until you get your way?
15. Play the martyr: give in, but let the other person know how much you are suffering?

Think also about how your methods of dealing with conflict change depending on who the conflict is with. Which of the above techniques do you use in conflicts with...

1. Friends?
2. Your boss?
3. Subordinates?
4. Parents?
5. Children?
6. Strangers?
7. Members of the opposite sex?
8. Authority figures, such as police officers?

You do not need to submit your answers to these questions, but they should help you discover more about the range of responses you might use. Pleas submit your paper by the morning of Monday, February 25.

PS: Don't forget to find a copy of Of Mice and Men and begin reading for March 4.