5.5 Respect and Anger

One of the most difficult emotional forces at work that prevents conflict resolution, and, in fact, may escalate the conflict, is anger. To see how this is so, think first about a conflict that arises between a parent and child, and how it informs our understanding of disputes, generally.

Imagine you are the parent of fifteen-year-old daughter. You, your wife, and other children are all waiting for the arrival of your fifteen-year-old daughter, so that you can leave on your long anticipated family vacation. You are making the trip by car, and need to leave at 4 P.M., to be able to stop for dinner and arrive at your cottage by 10 P.M. When your daughter left in morning for the last day of school, you made sure she knew to be home from school by 4 P.M. so that you could leave on time. Your last words to her were, “Don’t be late.” Now it is 4:30 P.M., and still no daughter. Your anger is rising.

Conflict resolution theorists tell us that what is likely to happen next is a problem inherent in coming together of anger and feelings of lack of respect.¹⁵ What is likely is that you will attribute a motive to your daughter’s lateness that may produce a significant long standing affect on your relationship with your daughter and you ability to resolve your conflict with her.

Imagine what might happen is you let your anger take over. You might yell at her for her behavior. You might attribute her behavior to lack of respect of you and the family. You might, without thinking, further attribute her behavior to a character defect she has, that she is inconsiderate, routinely late, and self centered. These and character traits you recognize because they come from you, (or her mother) and you were afraid they would surface in her, and now they have, and she has this flaw in her character.

She gets angry and cries. She says she was with her friends, and has a right to be! She says you are too compulsive, and what difference does it make if we get the cottage a few minutes later? She says that she is afraid of you, and that you can’t control your temper, that she hates you and hates living in family.

What just happened is what conflict resolution theorists’ describe as the volatile combination of attribution error and anger. Attribution is the process whereby the “harmdoer” and the harmed party assign responsibility for the harmdoer’s behavior. Each confronts the other with a judgment about who is responsible for the harm. The judgment of responsibility turns on the nature of the harmdoer’s excuses and motives for causing the harm. The judgment of appropriate responsibility can be laid out as follows:¹⁶

Of course, most of the time there is some combination of behavior or there is a disagreement about the nature of the excuses and whether they are controllable.

Consider for example how differently you feel about the situation where what happened to your daughter was as follows: She was approached by a good friend in tears, who asked for her help. Her stepfather was approaching her sexually, and she wanted someone she knew to talk to. She did not know where to turn and wanted your daughter to talk to her and help her figure out what best to do. A paradigm shift has just occurred.¹⁷ It is inappropriate for you to have been angry, because you daughter’s excuse relates to circumstances beyond her control. You would have been disappointed in her if she had not taken the time to talk to her friend.

Moreover, there is more at stake here. Because of your anger, you have attributed her behavior to disrespectful at best, self centeredness, and more likely, an intentional motive to harm the family. These attribution errors can cause the most damage to the ability of the parties to resolve the conflict. If the parties are not able to fairly assess what excuses are in actuality available, and whether they are beyond the control of the harmdoer, the parties are likely to attribute the behavior to intent, disrespect, and character flaws, provoking not guilt, but a righteous sense of being wronged, harmed, and unfairly blamed. These feeling will likely provoke an escalating response, of the kind you gave in your anger.

How often does a lawyer get angry during a negotiation? How often is that anger a result of the lawyer perceiving that the opponent does not respect either the lawyer or lawyer’s client? They attribute the behavior of their opponent and or opponent’s representative to an intention to harm, or to a character flaw in the opponent or client, or industry they represent. When anger occurs, the negotiators tend to say things that attribute the worst motives to their opposition and that are destructive of resolving disputes. They attribute greed and disrespect to the harmdoer or to the harmed party. Their lawyers tend to exaggerate the dispute by taking extreme positions. Then their opponents can point to these exaggerations as evidence of their opponent’s lying. As a result they justify tactics that obfuscate, deny responsibility, and justify taking further extreme positions because of the fear that any admission will be used to unfairly punish and exact retribution. Conflict escalates and can lead to deadlock, unless cooler heads prevail.

What does it mean in this context for cooler heads to prevail? The lawyer must think strategically for ways to deal with his or her own anger, and think strategically for ways to deal with the opponent’s anger. The first problem is one that is related to self control, and can be managed very much like any self control issue. Like an addiction, the problem with anger is that, to some, it feels good, it is born of an instinct to fight, is related to adrenalin, and feelings of power, and for some, is very hard to control. For the lawyer, it is often confused with the legitimate role that the lawyer must play, to passionately and zealously represent their clients within the bounds of law.

Because our opponents may be cowered by anger and “flee” rather than fight, if they think the anger is irrational enough, the effect may be that the negotiator’s anger produces the desired effect, an outcome in his client’s favor. After all, for a threat to be effective, it must be heard, understood, and believed. The emotion and passion of the speaker communicates a willingness to back up their position with violence, if necessary, and, at times, aids in the “believability” part of making a threat effective.

At risk, however, are escalation, deadlock, and permanent damage to the relationship. Interestingly, expressing a position in anger may make one more wedded to it and less willing to see the weakness in the position. In addition, a skilled opponent may see anger as weakness, not strength, and related to the flight instinct. The opponent may also see the failure of self control as a character flaw, indicating lack of confidence in the client’s position. The lawyer needs to be able to understand anger and manage it in order to implement the client’s goals.