The interplay of empathy and creativity resources in conflict resolution: A quantitative study in young adults

Details

Supervisors

Barbot, Baptiste ; Golab, Dominik

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

enGiven the substantial implications of conflict resolution skills for social functioning and personal well-being (Liu et al., 2025; Martínez-López et al., 2022), a central aim of conflict research is to identify the factors that shape conflict management. Within this line of research, empathy and creativity have often been highlighted as important constructs for adaptive conflict management (e.g., Aytug et al., 2025; Carnevale, 2006; de Wied et al., 2007; Klimecki, 2019). While these capacities have traditionally been examined separately, recent perspectives suggest that they may be more closely connected than previously assumed, potentially relying on shared psychological resources (Anderson et al., 2025; Golab & Barbot, 2024; Tie et al., 2025). However, despite their relevance, little research has examined how specific cognitive and emotional mechanisms may relate to different conflict resolution strategies. The present study therefore focuses on four resources relevant to both empathy and creativity: emotional awareness, cognitive flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity, and associative thinking. The examined resources were expected to predict more integrating and less avoiding conflict behaviour. Emotional awareness was additionally tested for its incremental contribution to integrating behaviour, while dominating strategies were explored without directional hypotheses. These assumptions were examined in a quantitative study with young adults aged 18 to 25 from Belgium, Germany, and Luxembourg. Participants completed online questionnaires and a Word Association Task. The data were analysed using multiple and hierarchical regression analyses. Overall, the results did not provide evidence for a general association between the examined resources and the three conflict styles. However, emotional awareness was positively related to integrating conflict behaviour and explained additional variance beyond the other resources. In contrast, no significant predictors were found for avoiding or dominating styles. These findings suggest that empathy- and creativity-related resources do not necessarily translate directly into conflict resolution behaviour. This may partly be due to the wide range of contextual factors involved in conflict situations, which were not examined in detail in the present study. Future research should use larger and more diverse samples, include demographic and contextual variables, and apply methods that more closely reflect real interpersonal conflict situations.