I have been much honored for my theoretical and research work in the following areas: cooperation and competition, conflict resolution, social justice, interdependence, psychological orientation, peace psychology, and prejudice. Much of this work was stimulated by my experiences in World War II, where I served in combat with the US Air Force. When I started my PhD graduate study at Kurt Lewin's Research Center for Group Dynamics (RCGD) at MIT in September 1945, I wanted to do work that would contribute to the development of a peaceful world.

Cooperation and Competition

At the time, I wondered whether the recently developed UN Security Council would be a cooperative or competitive group, and what the consequences would be of the two different types of functioning. Under the influence of the atmosphere at the RCGD and Lewin's dictum “There is nothing so practical as a good theory,” I turned these questions into my dissertation research. This was a theoretical and research study on the different effects of cooperation and competition on the functioning of small groups. This study laid the foundation for much of my subsequent work in conflict resolution, social justice, and peace psychology.

My theory, in brief, distinguished two basic types of interdependence between people (groups, nations): cooperative (where people win or lose together) and competitive (where if one gains, the other loses). It also described three basic processes that would be affected differently by the two types of interdependencies: substitutability (where one party's actions can satisfy the intentions of another), inducibility (where one party can influence another), and cathexis (in which positive or negative attitudes are developed toward another). I hypothesized that cooperative interdependence would lead to positive substitutability, inducibility, and cathexis; while competitive interdependence would have negative effects on these variables. A second independent variable in our theory was type of action: effective or ineffective. The effective action facilitates the actor's goal attainment; ineffective action hinders it. The preceding statements about the effects of cooperative and competitive interdependence assume effective actions. With ineffective actions, cooperative interdependence becomes more like competitive interdependence and competitive interdependence becomes more like cooperative interdependence.