ABSTRACT
As we have seen in chapter 12, conflict occurs when there is more than one individual or more than one group attempting to reach incompatible goals and it is feared that not all parties will be able to realize their goal. Misperceptions about the characteristics and goals of the other individuals or groups intensify the tension and hostility of the situation and escalate the conflict. Thus, intergroup conflict results in part from the desires of groups and their members to gain positive outcomes for themselves, but is frequently reinforced by misperceptions about the characteristics and goals of the other group or groups. These misperceptions may take the form of stereotypes and prejudices, and the eventual outcome only too often is discrimination or even outright hostility or violence. The types of conflicts that can occur between groups range from disagreements about beliefs and values among the students from different cultures in a school to differential treatment of people from different ethnic groups in a business to wars between nations for land or natural resources and even to genocide, as practiced in Na:zi Germany in the 1940s and in Yugoslavia in the 1990s in which the members of one group attempt to kill all of the members of another group. In extreme cases the individuals from one group may deindividuate members of the other group, such that they do not even consider them human beings (Bar-Tal, 1990; Staub, 1989). When such dehumanization occurs, the potential for hostility and violence is clear.
