An Analysis of the Role of Moralizing in Conflict Performance and Behavior

Abstract

In this thesis, I use the Insight approach and autoethnography to examine my own performance in a conflict that occurred during group work. I capture and analyze empirical data and develop theoretical implications about the role of moralizing in conflict behaviour and about the effect of greater reflexivity about moralizing on conflict practitioners and participants. Throughout the thesis I am guided by my research questions: a) How does moralizing function in conflict behavior? b) How can understanding moralizing contribute to improved conflict performance on the part of both the practitioner and the participant?

Moralizing is an intrinsic element of conflict performance. It involves a judgment of self or other when the individual conflates knowing and valuing. When one moralizes one treats either oneself or another as an object and ignores the subjective or inner performance of the operations of consciousness; or makes assumptions about it without adequate knowing. This results in epistemological and ontological distortion, e.g., when one treats the attribute as an unchanging aspect of the individual’s personality. Further distortion occurs when one treats the entirety of an individual’s personality as defined by a moral attribute. Such distortion creates a moralized object that then distracts one from one’s own interior operations and which thus limits curiosity.