Social psychology is a science that studies different scientific methods more specifically how ‘to understand and explain different thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals which are influenced by the actual or imagined presence of other human beings.’ Essentially, social psychology is all about understanding how each person’s behavior is influenced by the social environment and people around. In this report, we will discuss some main aspects of common factors due to what confusions occur in team works and in some work organizations as well as including some scientific experiments.
Social psychology looks at a wide range of social topics such as group behavior, leadership, aggression, and e.t.c and there are five most common factors which lead to conflicts in the group such as:
- Misunderstandings.
- Poor communication.
- Bad planning.
- Poor staff selection and lack of equal opportunities.
- Frustration and stress.
Also, an increase in the job in workspace causes people to feel that they are being pushed too hard and they will always experience stress so their progress at work will decrease by the time. Personality clashes – when a new member of staff joins or if two colleagues suddenly fall out then the how the group is organized lacks selection. Individuals may also respond to challenging situations in an Unresolved workplace issues – it is when an employee asks to be moved to another team because of their manager’s ‘aggressive’ leadership style. But there are also might be other reasons such as blaming their managers for a lack of training or experience. Changes can make employees feel vulnerable and uncertain because they worry about their future career. Therefore, managers should be cautious and consult often with their employees about future changes so that they will not feel isolated and embarrassed.
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Solutions to prevent conflicts; To prevent conflict in the workplace, people should try to learn as much as possible about why conflicts occur and therefore develop methods in order to solve them. What employers should take into consideration are:
- developing a strategy for managing conflict with managers, employees and your representatives
- to warn employees in advance about changes
- listening and consulting with employees on decision-making.
- giving perks and ensuring work safety
- ensuring that managers are properly trained and can handle management responsibilities
It can also be improved by using the following steps in order to prevent conflicts in the job sphere:
- rewarding employees when they are having some achievements
- regularly giving the employee some feedback on their work
It is very important to have equality policy. Having a clear equality policy in your workplace can help to avoid feelings of dishonest treatment and therefore create the right balance. Otherwise, the group members will not listen to their leaders as well as to each other. There is also another main factor which might create conflict and it is based on leaders. The leadership has several types and in this essay will be provided only 9 styles such as transactional, transformational, servant, autocratic, laissez-faire, democratic, bureaucratic, charismatic and situational. Most of them play a positive role, but in our opinion, the transformational type plays a more beneficial role, because it creates an environment of intellectual stimulation and provides a group of people with different ideas and in case of misunderstanding the leader will help a group to clarify a situation.
One of the famous psychologists Muzafer sheriff who was a Turkish-American social psychologist. His main input known as Realistic Conflict Theory includes competitiveness in groups, and group conflicts as well. One of the famous experiments called «Robbers Cave experiment» was conducted in [1954, 1958 and 1961} this experiment was based on several observations in order to exclude biased information. The main purpose of creating this experiment was to show the main factor which contributes to conflicts which were a competition. There were two groups and there were only boys aging from 10-12(there were 20 boys), and most of them did not know that they were included in an experiment, in reality, they thought that they are going to have a camp trip. So experimenters divided boys into two groups and none of them knew at first about the existence of another group.
At first, they had various games based on winning or losing, so the spirit of competition can be felt. The results amazed experimenters because boys got angry at each other very quickly, they sometimes even used violence, like fighting with each other. Yet in the end, they created again a calm relationship between teenagers by giving a common task, where they needed to solve a problem and at the end will be rewarded altogether. So this observation helps us to understand another reason why conflicts occur so often- this is because of the competition. Everyone desires to be dominant and right in all cases, they simply want to show their superiority.
Conclusion
As it can be seen there are mostly personal traits which play an important role in determining the appearance of conflict. Even there are various resolutions, not all of them proved to be effective. We tend to think that firstly people should start working on themselves and on how their minds are set up, without that no one will be able to distinguish peoples abilities. In this case, staff psychologists can utilize some tests which will help to reveal employees personalities and know in advance what kind of problems can happen in the near future. One of the famous football players Benjamin Watson once said that «One of the biggest things we have to be able to do is to handle conflict and handle it correctly. We’re able to look at our biases, look at our frustration, look at our sin in this area, our pride and our selfishness. It allows us to move forward.» That is why it is very important to work on yourself and then you will have an opportunity to participate in a group/organizational work without having any misconceptions.
