The roles of policy differences and inconsistency in policy conflict

• Brehmer,B. The roles of policy differences and inconsistency in policy conflict. Umeå Psychological Reports, No. 18, 1970. - Disagreement caused by policy differences is shown to be a function of two factors: the systematic differences between the policies and the consistency of these policies. The relative importance of the two factors is studied in an illustrative experiment involving decision making under conditions of uncertainty. The results of the experiment indicate that in the beginning of the conflict period,most disagreement is caused by systematic diffe- .rences in policy. These differences are, however,rapidly reduced. At the same time, the consistency of the policies decreases so that at the end of the conflict period, most of the disagreement is caused by lack of consistency in the policies.Due to this lack of consistency, the actual differences between the decisions made by the subjects are not very much reduced, despite the fact that the systematic differences between their policies have all but disappeared.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Psykologi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Psychology (hsv//eng)

Publication and Content Type

vet (subject category)

rap (subject category)