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.”
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.”
