Perhaps you learned during your education that our awareness of the external world begins with our neurological sensation of the external. For example, the presence of a cat nearby begins with light receptors in our retina, which are transmitted as signals to our brain. Our brains then interpret those signals and identifies the cat’s existence.

What then explains how individuals can respond to the same external surroundings in different ways?We’ve recognized that individuals can differ in sensory skills, such as with color blindness or nearsightedness. We also acknowledge that after becoming aware of the cat from the earlier example that we can attach individual experiences to the sensation, such as attaching loving feelings from past memories while another might attach different feelings as a result from allergic reactions. But we’ve assumed that each of us has the potential for generally the same neurological awareness of the cat.

Recent neuroscience research has cast a new light on this assumption. Research now suggests that many, if not most, of our neurological signals do not flow from the eye to the brain, but instead flow from the brain to the eye. From past experience our brain expects to see something and in essence predicts what the eye should see. Only when there is a discrepancy between the expectation and experience are neural signals sent to the brain.

Of course, generalizations from basic research are to be taken only as suggestions, but think of the implications of understanding that what we perceive of the world is what we already believe to be there and if so, our senses only unconsciously scan for discrepancies. For each of us, reality is what we expect to be correctly external only when we accept an awareness of a contradiction to that expectation.

How does this apply to conflict and dispute resolution? From past experiences we believe new neighbors are trouble. That is what we believe and what we see. We see what we expect to be there. We interact with our new neighbor based on our belief which, in turn, influences how our new neighbor builds the expectation of us. Their expectation of us begins to be one of an unfriendly person. We may have conflicts.

How are these beliefs changed? First there must be a willingness to be open to an awareness of discrepancies, then an acknowledgement of a discrepancy, and then a willingness to change our mental image. Perhaps only after a dramatic change in our own life we become open to new experiences and begin to see our neighbor’s actions are not expressions of being unfriendly at all. Our neighbor didn’t change, only our expectation of how we see them.

Initially we all see what we each expect to from the outset, which explains why we don’t all agree, at least at first, on the things we see around us.

To read more about this research, consult Andy Clark’s 2013 work in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, “Whatever next? Predictive brains, situated agents, and the future of cognitive science.”

We have survived more than a year of the Covid-19 pandemic. However, many have endured isolation, anxiety, grief and trauma. As people are now returning to their workplace we have to recognize all that has been experienced by our fellow colleagues.

A recent article in The Atlantic brings that trauma to light. More than 580,000 Americans have died so far from Covid-19 leaving some 5 million grieving parents, children, siblings, spouses and friends. Millions became sick, many still dealing with symptoms months afterwards. And millions more experienced the stress of unemployment, financial strain, full-time parenting with children out of school and isolation. At the same time, the whole nation felt the tragedies of killings and mass shootings, the U.S. Capitol insurrection, wildfires, and the Texas power crisis. It’s unlikely that anyone has not be touched in somne way or another by one of these events. 

Even those of us who escaped major trauma have experienced the stress that impacts our mental health. Yes, we are resilient, but there is the cultural tendency to go it alone, to “bottle up” the stress, to not talk about our experiences.

Employers need to recognize that even small irritations as people return to the workplace can lead to conflicts that before such stresses were previously ignored. In one office as people returned a major dispute had arisen over one employee who typically removes her shoes at her desk and on occasion walks a few steps away for one reason or another. Before the pandemic her co-workers didn’t mind or would jokingly remind her to put her shoes on. Recently, however, this erupted into a major issue because everyone in the office was simply at the top of their stress tolerance.

A pre-COVID survey of workers in the United States, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom asked what managers could do to manage conflicts. Fewer than 10% of workers felt that managers should do nothing. In fact, 40% wanted their managers to act as mediators. That percentage is undoubtedly a majority now and managers should realize that they do not need to be a certified mediator to address such issues. Any manager can use mediation skills to help employees in what will be a more stressful and more conflict filled few years to come.