Chart # 2

What appears to be significant for this study is that more respondents report that the capacities are strictly innate than those who report that they are strictly learned. In some cases, as with cooperation and relationships, twice as many people believe that the capacity is innate, while with empathy and forgiveness four to five times as many people believe that the capacity is innate. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the capacities are innate, but it may show that some peacemakers find behaviors related to the capacities to be an integral part of how their clients function. Empathy in particular shows up in the data as one capacity worthy of much closer examination. The data shows a very large proportion of the respondents believe that empathy is an innate human capacity. This is consistent with the literature review and points to the empathy capacity as one that could be predictable.

The heavy weight placed on the learned and predominantly learned answers of all the capacities, but especially cooperation and relationships, works both for and against the idea that these are common capabilities. For example, Chart 1 shows that understanding the reciprocal nature of relationships is found to be common by 91.3% of the peacemakers while at the same time, most of the same peacemakers believe that the capability is learned. While this may mean that humans all have the ability as a core capacity, and it may be nurtured to a point of being useful, it may also mean that the capability is only learned and that we may find people that have no concept of the behavior if the study were to be expanded. The answers may also reflect the “book learning” of the respondents rather than the actual make-up of their clients. This perception among peacemakers may open up an entirely new area to be studied, rich in ideas about what we as peacemakers bring to the table.

Survey Results and Synthesis (Continued)

With empathy being one of the areas that current literature points to as common among most humans that are not sociopaths, it is surprising that 8.5% of the peacemakers believe that empathy does not exist in most people. Does this mean that some peacemakers are working in segments of the population that do not have or use empathy, or does it mean that some peacemakers are not able to sense this in their clients for some reason (perhaps a lack of empathy in the peacemaker), or is it something else? The ramifications of the “no” answers in all five questions are as rich in information as the “yes” answers are because they highlight the peacemaker’s personality, ability, and perhaps even their style in using and enhancing that with which their clients arrive.

The questions and the data tend to simplify a very complex set of human behaviors. This simplification may be useful in some complex conflict situations, however we must be careful not to make assumptions at this point in the research. The questions were designed specifically to steer the respondents to these five capacities only, with the realization that there may be other core capacities and that all capacities may or may not be inter-related. In trying to root out a way to tabulate behavior, the questions related to reconciliation asked about the “desire” or “want” to reconcile rather than asking about the capacity to reconcile differences. Those questions assumed that the “desire” itself might be the innate capacity. Future research may refine the questions to try to define some of the ambiguity in the data. A great deal of further study is needed to test conflict managers and their clients in this area.
Questions and their answer data reported in Chart # 2 test the idea that some of the capacities may be innate while others may be learned. The questions were phrased in a way that allowed the respondents to answer in only one of four categories. As is the case with many nature vs. nurture discussions, the answers often straddle the divide. In the design of the questions, I wanted to allow answers on all sides of the spectrum. In interpreting the data, one could add the results of say “innate” and “predominantly innate” and make a comparison to the “learned” and “predominantly learned” total. This would set-up a competition between learned and innate, which is tempting, but not altogether useful here. For example, this competition in the data might leave out the person who believes that a capacity is “predominantly learned” and “innate.”