Open Access 04 January 2019

The experience of war: Conflict thinking and conflict interaction


Pages: 41-51
Received 04.01.2019
Revised 04.01.2019
Accepted 04.01.2019

Abstract

Based on the mass survey results there are analyzed the causes of conflicts that arise while civilians-combatants interaction. It is noted that today the certain attitudes are rooted in society towards servicemen’s participation in the war and their role in it; moreover, these attitudes can differ and can coincide in combatants and in civilians. It is revealed that conflict interaction caused to some extent, on the one hand, by civilians’ attitudes (which are based on the riddance of combatants’ subjectivity and excessive pathologization of the process of their return to civil life), on the other hand, conflicts may be caused by combatants’ attitudes towards exaggerated civilians’ aggression against them. The results of the mass social survey are presented, during which it is discovered that such conflicts most often arise within the state representatives and the state bodies, in everyday social life, or in the sphere of family relations. Based on the results of the survey, it is made a conclusion that Ukrainian context of conflicts between combatants and civilians is related to the unconsciousness of civilian population of real ideas about the war; the hostilities and their impact on combatants; the prolonged combatants presence in the area of hostilities; the general state of social tension caused by military actions and socio-economic situation in the country; the general, typical for all human kind perception mistakes and cognitive distortions; the overstated level of mutual expectations about the role of each party in public life and responsibility for it; the purposeful formation of distorted representations as an element of propaganda and part of a hybrid war, etc. The results of the survey showed that there is also a significant number of citizens who are not certain about their attitude to important war-peace issues. It is made an assumption that the general mechanisms of uncertainty feeling, unfortunately, anticipate the increase in quantity of negative, aggressive manifestations

conflicts, group interaction, hostilities, martial thinking, veterans’ adaptation

References

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Suggested citation

Kukharuk, O. (2018). The experience of war: Conflict thinking and conflict interaction. Scientific Studios on Social and Political Psychology, 24(2), 41-51.

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