Psychology and the round table talks
Open Access
- 1 January 2019
- journal article
- Published by Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) in Social Psychological Bulletin
- Vol. 14 (4)
- https://doi.org/10.32872/spb.v14i4.2307
Abstract
Poland in 1988 was on the edge of economic, social and political collapse. The two antagonistic entities – the communist party and the government on one side and the Solidarity movement on the other - were each too weak to overcome the crisis by itself. Undertaking negotiations appeared to be the last chance to solve the crisis peacefully. There was a number of external circumstances and opportunities that supported undertaking the Talks, including Michail Gorbachev's perestroika in the East, Ronald Reagan's anti-communist policies in the West, the support of the Catholic Church and the support of the vast majority of Polish society. The whole Round Table story can be viewed as a transformation from a zero-sum game to a cooperative non zero-sum game with the solution close to a Pareto optimal solution. The processes included, among others: concentration on problems rather than people; building a mutual trust; creating the idea of the common good; and partitioning negotiations into many teams thereby creating a decision-making structure that was both hierarchical and flexible. After thirty years, both democracy and the rule of law are at stake again in Poland. Unfortunately, however, it does not seem that today’s socio-political situation is capable of fostering negotiation methods for solving the nation’s problems.Keywords
This publication has 7 references indexed in Scilit:
- The psychology of social dilemmas: A reviewOrganizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 2013
- NegotiationAnnual Review of Psychology, 2010
- Attributions of intergroup bias and outgroup homogeneity to ingroup and outgroup othersEuropean Journal of Social Psychology, 2005
- Expanding the analysis of social orientations by reference to the sequential–temporal structure of situationsEuropean Journal of Social Psychology, 1997
- ALTERNATIVES TO HAVING A BATNA IN DYADIC NEGOTIATION: THE INFLUENCE OF GOALS, SELF‐EFFICACY, AND ALTERNATIVES ON NEGOTIATED OUTCOMESInternational Journal of Conflict Management, 1996
- Trust and commitment in the United States and JapanMotivation and Emotion, 1994
- Trust, social categories, and individuals: The case of genderMotivation and Emotion, 1994