By Behnam Nadimfard

As I began my first week as a Research Assistant/Case Worker with the Winkler Institution at Osgoode, I took it upon myself to learn as much as possible about mediation. In doing so, I had the privilege of attending the “Applying Findings from Neuroscience to Community Mediation” webinar/workshop. In this webinar, Tim Hicks, the author of Embodied Conflict, briefly walked us through the major topics of his book (you can find the link to this book at the end of this post), which sheds light on the neural basis of conflict and communication. Here are my two takeaways from this workshop.

Neural Structure and Past Experiences

Referring to his book, Tim Hicks made some fascinating remarks about how every human is an embodied being in their neural structure, and our nervous system encodes perceptual experiences. The capacity to encode data inputs begins as early as an embryo inside its mother’s womb, where it starts to encode its mother’s voice. That is why newborn babies are simmered down when they hear their mother. Furthermore, human beings associate different meanings to words based on their life experiences. For example, if you close your eyes and think about the word ‘food,’ chances are, you and I are thinking about different things, and the way we perceive food is dissimilar.

Therefore, individuals’ pre-existing neural structures, combined with the sum of their life experiences, shape their identities as they walk into the mediation room. This means that the same word uttered by the mediator, or any party to the mediation, could be interpreted differently based on the other person’s unique perspective.

Conflict resolution is about changing peoples’ minds, literally!

Building upon what was discussed above, another interesting takeaway from this webinar is that when mediators ask the parties to change their minds about a specific issue, they ask that person to shift their neural structure about that subject physically. The mediator is trying to change their perception of reality through facilitating a literal, neurological, and physiological change in the ordinary neural pathways of the perception of that individual.  Interestingly, in times of uncertainty and conflict (i.e., mediation), this transformative experience is less elastic. This inelasticity means the person would be less willing to change their neural structure about the matter in dispute, causing the mediation to reach potential roadblocks.

To conclude, I hypothesize that explicitly acknowledging the natural process underlying individuals’ perceptions by the mediator could allow each party to be cognizant of how words that seem very familiar to them could have an entirely different meaning to the other party sitting across the table, that could cause them to act unexpectedly. I believe that by educating the parties about the cognitive process that underlies their interactions during the mediation, each party may better empathize with their counterpart, and as a result, potentially smoothen the mediation process.

Here you can find the link to purchase Embodied Conflict by Tim Hicks.