Peter Coleman’s ‘The Five Percent’ Reviewed in the Harvard Negotiation Journal

Excerpt from the article:

I reread this passage of Peter Coleman’s book, The Five Percent: Finding Solutions to Seemingly Impossible Conflicts, just after I finished reading the newspaper accounts of the riots that erupted throughout the Middle East in response to the release of the video trailer for a film titled Innocence of Muslims. This extremely cheap, crudely made video presents Islam as a lie and Mohammed as a pedophile. Predictably, newspaper and television accounts emphasized the disproportion between the offending video and the violent response it elicited. Commentators expressed puzzlement about how so amateurish a video could be taken as representative of American attitudes toward Islam and struggled to find a framework in which they could speak intelligently about these incidents…

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About The Five Percent

One in every twenty difficult conflicts ends up not in a calm reconciliation or tolerable standoff but as an acute and lasting antagonism. Such conflicts—the five percent—can be found among the diplomatic and political clashes we read about every day in the newspaper but also, and in a no less damaging and dangerous form, in our private and personal lives, within families, in workplaces, and among neighbors. These self-perpetuating conflicts resist mediation, defy conventional wisdom, and drag on and on, worsening over time. Once we get pulled in, it is nearly impossible to escape. The five percent rule us.

So what can we do when we find ourselves ensnared? According to Dr. Peter T. Coleman, to contend with this destructive species of conflict we must understand the invisible dynamics at work. Coleman has extensively researched the essence of conflict in his “Intractable Conflict Lab,” the first research facility devoted to the study of polarizing conversations and seemingly unresolveable disagreements. Informed by lessons drawn from practical experience, advances in complexity theory, and the psychological and social currents that drive conflicts both international and domestic, Coleman offers innovative new strategies for dealing with disputes of all types, ranging from abortion debates to the enmity between Israelis and Palestinians.

A timely, paradigm-shifting look at conflict, The Five Percent is an invaluable guide to preventing even the most fractious negotiations from foundering.

Visit the Five Percent Website