Resolving Internal Conflicts – (Mechanism and Contextual Influences)

In this talk I will revisit two seminal psychological theories through the lens of the mechanistic properties of, and contextual influence on internal conflict resolution. I will first discuss Kurt Lewin’s Motivational Conflicts theory which distinguishes between approach-approach (AP-AP) and avoidance-avoidance (AV-AV) conflicts. I will present classic behavioral, mouse-tracking, and EEG evidence pertaining to three core questions: First, Why AP-AP and AV-AV conflicts differ (testing a force-fields mechanism)? Second, when do they differ (looking at contextual boundary conditions)? And third, whether they indeed differ (are they construed as different tasks)? I will then look into Bem’s Self Perception theory, which broadly posits that individuals learn about their preferences through observing their own behavior. Using a novel application of the mouse-tracking paradigm, I will show how tracking their own conflict resolution (choice) process affects individuals’ conflict markers and meta-cognitive inferences. I will conclude with implications for other fields of psychological research, and advocate for the importance of revisiting classic psychological theories using theoretical and empirical knowledge that we have accumulated through the years.