Question

Interpersonal Conflict is an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent people who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, or interference in the achievement of their goals. There are three types of conflict - pseudo conflict, simple conflict and ego conflict. What are these types of conflict and can you provide an example of when you have experienced them?

Answer 1

Pseudo conflict: Pseudo conflict, as the name suggests, is mostly a conflict that arises out of misconception between two or more members. There is no conflict that exists between them in reality. The cause of this conflict is mostly due to a lack of communication, jumping to conclusions by making assumptions.

Example: A roommate of mine knew that I had access to the wifi portal and knew how to control the connectivity to devices. One day when the internet stopped working for him, he assumed that I had blocked his device and did not communicate and showed resentment towards me the entire day. Only when he asked me if there was an issue, I could show him that there was an issue with our internet service provider, and the normal relationship was restored. In this situation, there was no conflict but the roommate jumped to conclusions and this caused a pseudo conflict.

Simple conflict: This type of conflict is due to the difference of opinion between two individuals leading to a conflict. The conflict is very simple in this case and can be resolved by using rational discourse.

Example: One of the experiences of simple conflict was while discussing the impact of the blog of the company on consumers. The manager had asked us for suggestions to make changes to the article. My opinion was that the team should focus more on the quality of the article by reducing numbers. The colleague who disagreed with me felt that the number of words in articles have to be there to strengthen the content. This lead to a simple conflict between the two of us. We resolved the issue by sticking to the rationale for each decision and we reached an agreement in the end.

Ego conflict: Ego conflict is a type of conflict where one of the members feels that they have been a victim of personal attacks and there are a lot of emotions in this type of conflict. The source of this conflict is also due to individuals trying to win an argument and blaming each other.

Example: An incident that highlights this conflict is when two people involved in a game losing the match blame each other and launch personal attacks at each other. In this case, the ego of the individuals is hurt along with their pride.