Personality, gender, and experience a study of conflict practitioners

Much research has been conducted on the differences among people in how they approach conflict situations. While much attention has been given to the personalities and resulting frame preferences of conflict participants, little has been given to the actual practitioners and theorists themselves. Analysis was conducted on 75 conflict practitioner interviews in order to explore relationships among personality traits, gender, location of action (i.e., domestic, international, or general) and four conflict frames (i.e., dealmaker/orchestrator; neutrality/equity; transformative/pragmatic; and associative/dissociative). Gender and primary location of action were found to be significantly related to two of the four frames, and conceptual complexity emerged as a key personality trait related to two of the four frames. Implications for practitioner training programs are discussed