Abraham Maslow, a psychologist, wrote that all people are driven to fulfill their fundamental human needs for safety, security, love, a sense of belonging to a group, self-esteem, and the ability to attain one's goals. A group of conflict theorists--among them Herbert Kelman and John Burton--have adopted Maslow's ideas to conflict theory, suggesting that these needs underlie many deep-rooted and intractable conflicts. When social conflicts are caused by the denial of one or more of these essential needs, the victims will fight indefinitely for their achievement and will not give up until that goal is attained.
If this is true, it easily explains why needs conflicts tend to be so intractable. However, unlike many interest-based conflicts, needs conflicts do not have to be win-lose. The reasons they seem to be, argues conflict theorist Jay Rothman, is that they are confused with interest conflicts. Yet unlike land or water or money, which are often in short supply, needs do not run out. The provision of security to one group does not deny security to another. Rather, needs tend to be mutually-reinforcing. If one group stops threatening the other, the first will, most likely, stop threatening them.
Problems develop when conflict becomes so ingrained in the culture that certain people or groups are unwilling to change their attitudes towards their opponents, or are unwilling to forgive, even when their opponent's attitudes and behaviors have changed. But slow reductions in tensions--see the entry on GRIT, for example--can begin a process which will lead to conflict reduction and eventually, resolution. However, reconciliation of needs conflicts cannot even begin before the legitimate needs of all people and groups are recognized and steps started, at least, to meet them.
Most intractable conflicts involve the denial of human needs, at least to some extent, so that all of the solutions presented here are useful in dealing with this kind of problem. Entries of special interest, however, include:
All of the problems here relate to this problem in some way. Those that are most directly related include:
Confusing Material Interests With Fundamental Human Needs
Attempting to Negotiate Non-negotiable Issues
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