To address this question, the Dual-Concern Model was central, with its five conflict styles (avoiding, compromising, dominating, integrating, obliging) applied for the first time to approaches of political conflict management in the context of the Middle East conflict (Rahim & Magner, 1995; Rubin, Pruitt & Kim, 1994).
To this end, a questionnaire was developed as part of an 11-month project in collaboration with over 100 supporting Israelis, Palestinians, and experts from various fields such as diplomacy, history, economics and law, capturing diverse perspectives on the Middle East complex.
In a preliminary study, an initial version of the questionnaire was administered to N = 140 participants. Following a factor analysis, the selected and revised items – together with an instrument measuring interpersonal conflict styles – were translated and back translated into Arabic and Hebrew. The questionnaire was distributed in summer 2024 via numerous civil society actors in the DACH region as well as in Israel and Palestine. More than 635 individuals participated in the international survey, of whom N = 433 provided complete datasets for analysis.
The results indicate that multiple facets of political conflict can be derived from the developed items and that these are systematically associated with private conflict styles – though not uniformly, but selectively.
In particular, small to strong cross-domain correlations are found for avoidant, compromise-oriented, and integrative styles. In contrast, dominant and obliging conflict styles show only small or no associations between the political and private domains. This may suggest that these styles are more context-dependent and more strongly influenced by situational factors.
Overall, conflict styles can be understood as neither stable personality traits nor purely context-dependent. Rather, dispositional and situational factors appear to interact to a varying degree depending on the specific conflict style.
This work addresses key issues of prevention, de-escalation, and the promotion of constructive approaches to conflict, for example in the context of political education. The interest shown in the findings by various civil society actors from the conflict region underscores their societal relevance. The study was awarded a university prize and received an honorable mention at the Gert-Sommer-Prize 2026.
Authors: Christoph Hahn, Prof. Dr. Siegfried Preiser
Research Grant: Walter-Jacobsen-Gesellschaft e.V.
Hahn, C., Preiser, S. (2026). Konfliktstile im Nahen Osten. Inwiefern hängen Stile privater Konfliktbehandlungen mit Ansichten zu politischen Konfliktbehandlungen zusammen? Politische Psychologie / Journal of Political Psychology. In press.
Rahim, M. A., & Magner, N. R. (1995). Confirmatory factor analysis of the styles of handling interpersonal conflict: First-order factor model and its invariance across groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80(1), 122–132. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.80.1.122
Rubin, J. Z., Pruitt, D. G., & Kim, S. H. (1994). Social conflict: Escalation, stalemate, and settlement (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill.