The Cognition of Conflict: Ontology, Dynamics, and Ideology - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 17

Symmetric and asymmetric conflicts also seem to exist. The incompatibility
between the two states of the world (P and Q) does not seem to be bidirectional
in all conflicts. As a case of asymmetric conflict, consider, for example, X's goal P
of cleaning the window of some shopping center in order to be paid by the owner,
and the goal Q of Y (a “black bloc” in a political demonstration) of breaking that
window. If X pursues and realizes his goal P, this will not prevent Y from pursuing
and realizing her goal Q, whereas if Y realizes her goal of breaking the window, X
will not be in a position to achieve P. Of course, a certain time order is presupposed;
in fact, the conflict is not necessarily between simultaneous, parallel actions. Also,
a sequence of actions can create conflict if the results of an action destroy the
conditions for the performance or the effect of a subsequent action. This relation
is not necessarily bilateral or symmetric. 7

1.5.3 Full Social Conflict: Hostility

A full social conflict arises when there is a subjective awareness of a competitive
situation. Awareness, of course, may be unilateral , bilateral ,or mutual .
Unilateral means that X is willing and ready to act against Y, while Y does not
have a symmetric attitude toward X because, for example, Y is not aware of the
conflict situation, she disagrees about the presence of a conflict (different beliefs),
she does not have the ascribed goals, or she has different priorities and does not want
to fight with X. As we saw, bilateral means that X sees a conflict with Y and Y sees
a conflict with X. It may or may not be the same conflict; in this case, they converge
on this representation, but they do not necessarily know the other's viewpoint or the
fact that the other knows about their view. This would characterize a mutual conflict.
Subjective conflicts (the awareness of incompatible goals) lead to hostility or
aggression, and then (if the new goal prevails) to a higher level of conflict: a fight.
A theory of conflict presupposes and requires a theory of basic social attitudes :
In adoption ( 1995 ) one agent adopts the goal of another agent (i.e., she pursues it
as her own goal) because she believes that it is the other's goal and in order to make
the other agent achieve it. In hostility , on the contrary, one agent has the goal that
another agent does not fulfill or achieve some of his goals.
Generalized hostility is the opposite of benevolence, which represents an attitude
of favoring others, the disposition to adopt others' goals, to help or exchange or
cooperate.

7 This can also hold at the individual level: a conflict between the goal of X that P and action A1
for P, and another goal and action of X: A2. It may be that if X performs A1 before A2, A2 cannot
be successful; the plan is wrong. But if X performs A2 before A1, there is no problem; they are in
the right order. The conflict is due to the temporal order (conflict in planning).