frustration and conflict

FRUSTRATION AND CONFLICT

Frustration
Frustration is an inevitable consequence of living. As responses, frustration can become conditional to any number of stimuli. It is produced by interfering with or blocking the motivated behavior of an organism. The means by which frustration can be produced are designated as frustration by delay, thwarting and conflict. The frustrating effects of delay and thwarting are common and there is experimental evidence in support of their producing frustration. Sources of frustration for children and adults were discussed and examples of situations that are thwarting were mentioned.

Frustration by delay
Frustration by delay is an everyday occurrence in most our lives. We wait for a bus or taxi when they are not on time; the key to the car cannot be found and we are in hurry to go some place; the door is locked when we try to enter the house or office in hurry; a friend is late for an appointment or for a date; the check out line in the supermarket is long and we must wait; dinner is not ready and we are hungry; we have something vital to say and we must wait until someone else finishes talking.

Frustrating by thwarting
Interference with motivated behavior in almost any fashion can be considered thwarting. Frustration of minor sort probably occurs as the result of such obstructions. Minor frustrations are an inevitable part of learning situation. The thwarting in the usual learning situation usually is temporary and can be overcome by appropriate behavior.


Frustrating by conflict
Conflict has been indicated as one of the means by which frustration is produced. Conflict is the one of the ways by which motivated behavior can be prohibited. In conflict, the delay or thwarting is caused by interfering response tendencies of a organism. Decision must be made in the ordinary processes of living. When ever a choice among alternatives has to be made, some element of conflict is introduced. Conflict is an inevitable consequence of life. It cannot be avoided completely, even in the best organized and regulated cultures.

Consequences of frustration
Frustration may have motivational consequences and produce changes in drive. When blocked in his goal seeking the individual may react immediately or may developed attitudes toward uncertainty or risk taking that have more enduring consequences. Frustrations my result in responses of aggression; regression; restlessness and tension; withdrawal and escape; fantasy. Organism can learn responses to frustration, and reduction in frustration may serve as reinforcement for learning certain situations.

Aggression
Direct aggression. Frustration often leads to aggression against the individual or object that is the source of the frustration. In ordinary play situations, when one small child takes toy from another child, the second is likely to attack the first in an attempt to regain the toy.
Displaced aggression is an aggressive action against an innocent person or object rather then against the actual cause frustration. The men who bawled out by his boss may come home and take his unexpressed resentment on his wife or children.

Regression
Regression is defined as a return to more primitive modes of behavior, that is to modes behavior characterizing a younger age. There are two interpretations of regression.
One is that in midst of insecurity the individual attempts to return to a period of past security. The older child seeks the love and affection once bestowed upon him by behaving again as he did when he younger : crying, seeking parental caresses, and so on. This type of regression is called retrogressive behavior, a turn to behavior once engaged in.
The second interpretation of regression is that the childish behavior following frustration is simply a more primitive quality but not actually a return to earlier behavior.
Restlessness and tension
In the toy experiment, one of the first evidences of frustration shown by the children was an excess of movement : fidgeting about and generally restless behavior. Drawings took the form of scribbling because the muscles were tense and movement thus jerky. This restlessness was associated with many actions indicating unhappiness : whimpering, sighing, complaining.
An increase in tension and in the level of excitement also occurs when adults are blocked and thwarted. They blush or tremble or clench their fists. Children under tension fall back upon thumb-sucking and nail-biting; adults also turn to nail-biting, as well as smoking and gum chewing, as outlets for their restlessness.

Withdrawal and escape
People who are severely frustrated in a given situation may try to escape or withdraw from that situation. A collage student has not been studying at regular intervals and is now confronted with the prospects of an examination at the next class meeting. He is in an avoidance-avoidance conflict situation. He wants to avoid failure in this course. The only way he can do it is to study but he wants to avoid studying this uninteresting material.

Fantasy
When problems become too much for us we sometimes seek the solution of escape into a dream world, a solution through fantasy rather than on a realistic level. This was the solution of the child who lay on the floor reciting nursery rhymes in frustration experiment, and other children in the experiment who crossed the barrier by talking about the whole toys on the other side. One little girl fished trough the wire, imagining the floor on the other side to be the pond that was actually out of reach.

Classification of reactions of frustration
An attempt to make a gross classification of conscious reaction to frustration has been made by Rosenzweig (1944). According to his classification system, responses to frustration can be designated as extrapunitve, intropunitivie, and impunitive.
In the extrapunitive type. The individual directs his reaction outward toward others. He expresses his anger toward other people an blames for his misfortunes
The intopunitive reaction is involved when the individual experiences humiliation and guilt. He hold himself responsible.

Conflict
Conflict as a source of frustration was developed more extensively then were delay and thwarting. The varieties of conflict situations can be described as approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance, approach-avoidance, and double approach-avoidance. Resolution of conflict of the approach-approach variety appears to be more readily accomplished than conflict of other varieties. Avoidance-avoidance conflicts can be extremely frustrating and result in deviant behavior. There has been a good deal of laboratory experimentation on the general topic of conflict with both humans and lower animals. Conflictual situations are to be found in great number in the lives of children and adults. When conflicts are between values or are essentially moral in nature, they are called inner conflicts

Varieties of conflict
Just as frustration can be produced by different methods, there are means of producing conflicts that result in frustration. Basically, there are three varieties of situations that produce conflicts (Lewin, 1933)and a fourth variety that takes into account complex situations in which there are more than two response tendencies competing simultaneously (Hovland and Sears, 1938). Response tendencies can be directed toward either a stimulus or an incentive (approach responses), or they can be directed away from a stimulus that noxious (avoidance responses).

Approach-approach conflict
Many student have difficulty deciding between two majors in college. Each major has great attraction for them and they have difficulty making decision as to which one offers the greater satisfactions. Two job offers of equal or near equal description, salary and opportunity for promotion present a common conflict for the college graduated seeking employment.

Avoidance-avoidance conflict
Conflicts of the avoidance-avoidance variety occur with regularity in our lives. They occur whenever a person is simultaneously stimulated by two aversive stimuli in a situation where movement away from either stimulus results in approaching the other aversive stimulus. The avoidance-avoidance conflict places the individual in dilemma. Whichever of the two available means of responding he uses, he is bound to lose he is in situation where he cannot really in win.

Approach-Avoidance conflict
A commonly encountered conflict situation is one in which two stimuli are presented at the same time and in the same location and one of the stimuli elicits approach responses and the other avoidance responses.

Double approach-avoidance conflict
Double approach-avoidance conflict situations involve two stimuli, each which is complex. That is, each of the two stimuli elicit both approach responses and avoidance responses. If the choices are multiple rather than between only two complex stimulus situations, the conflict would be more appropriately designated as multiple approach-avoidance; however, it is conventional to refer to all of these complex situations as double approach-avoidance.