The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 14

A felt psychological conflict is a special kind of internal conflict 5 :

- between active goals;

- among rather important goals (high value, with important consequences and

concerns);

- involving a difficult choice resulting from a balanced comparison of the goals'

values;

- producing some level of anxiety .

To be in conflict or to experience a conflict, I must have and perceive some
difficulty that must be resolved; I feel “split” between the two perspectives, for the
following possible reasons:

- Because there is too much uncertainty or lack of crucial information, and so I

feel anxiety and worry about making the wrong decision;

- Or because the value of the “sacrificed” goal is too high; as stated earlier,

any decision in a conflict implies a perceived “renunciation,” that is, a loss ,a
suffering;

- Or the perceived risk in case of failure is too high, in that potential harm is very

high or its probability is high (subjective risk of failure).

I also worry about possible future “regrets,” repentance, and self-reproach, and I
can add this to my mental accounting.
The top level of conflict is when my decision is suspended, blocked; I am unable
to decide. Either I suspend my decision or I give up trying to decide, for example,
by delegating the decision to somebody else or leaving it to chance.
After a decision is made, the situation (mental focus) is transformed: we set aside
the previous alternatives and just focus on the chosen goal, which must dictate our
actions and monitor the results, and on the implementative subgoals and executive
action schemas. Only when we reach the outcome (especially if some surprise
occurs owing to a mismatch with our expectations) may we reconsider the predicted
costs and possible alternatives, with affective reactions of disappointment for the
result or of regret for our bad decision. In a sense the conflict can reemerge, although
we are impotent, but we can learn for the next time.
Moreover, following a choice (and to stabilize our behavior and mind) we tend
to emphasize why our preference is the best one. 6 In fact, if we realize that we
are acting in a way that is inconsistent with our beliefs/opinions, when we notice
such a cognitive-behavioral dissonance and inconsistency, we tend to rationalize our

5 It might be interesting to note in passing that internal conflicts also apply to abstract agents
like, for example, groups, organizations, or states in which conflicts among members can
implement/generate an internal conflict at the level of the abstract agent. If there is an internal
conflict in an abstract agent, there should be either an internal conflict in at least one of its members
or an interagent conflict among some of its members.
6 And after we have invested in that perspective, we increase the value of the goal [see sunk costs
effects in, for example, Arkes and Ayton ( 1999 )] to make it more stable.