Study Of The Effects Of Conflict Interaction Among College Students (Law)

Abstract

Nowadays the reveal of the emotional sphere potential of a lawyer is one of the urgent scientific and practical issues. The study was conducted in three stages. The first one was presented by theoretical study of psychological and pedagogical sources and selection of research methods: search and preparation. The methods were chosen taking into account age and research topics. The second stage was experimental (conducting a stating experiment, interpreting the results). The third stage was presented by the analysis and generalization of the research results, providing recommendations for the correction of the emotional states of participants of the protection of consumer rights: control and summarizing. The authors used the theoretical methods such as literature analysis, concretization, synthesis and generalization. They also used empirical methods such as ascertaining experiment and testing. The empirical research was performed in Chelyabinsk Bureau of Legal Assistance LLC. The students of South Ural State College (jurisprudence) participated in this study. They were 19–20 years old. Based on the results of the ascertaining experiment, we found out that the emotional state of students was characterized by the average aggressiveness, frustration, anxiety, rigidity. It is necessary to cope with these negative manifestations during practical course, since internship is an extremely significant period in the development of a specialist as a person and the development of a value attitude to professional activity. Successful coping requires systemic and systematic psychological and pedagogical correction using special targeted programs.

Keywords: Activity, conflict, emotional state, mood, students, well-being

Introduction

Nowadays the leading aspect in professional training should be the formation of emotional stability, as one of the most important professional qualities (Dudina & Dolgova, 2016). Scientists from different countries active study these possibilities and come to conclusions about the ambiguity of the influence of emotions on the expediency of behavior and performance.

Classical philosophical theories consider the basic qualities of human existence such as truth, knowledge, humility, and virtue, and how these qualities influenced and directed individual people's belief and group behavior (Hoffman, 2020).

This is reflected in the definition of conflict interaction itself, which is the result of competitive disagreement regarding beliefs, values and preferences, characterized by intolerance of the parties to each other's positions (Minson & Dorison, 2022; Yang & Li, 2018). The cause-and-effect model of relationship conflict includes three reasons that cause it and two consequences that often occur. Whereas previous research has focused on consequences – negative conclusions about opposing views and the negative impact on the prospect of interacting with them: we focus on prior events. In particular, we suggest that disagreements that lead to relationship conflict are often characterized by perceptions of high outcome importance, subject interdependence and evidence bias.

The ability of a lawyer to prevent and resolve emotional and legal conflicts plays special role in legal activity. The diversity of interests of participants in public relations is the basis for the reproduction of the manifestation of disputes in an array of public relations. Under such conditions, the question of defining a legal conflict is reduced to the establishment of essential features, which additionally distinguishes it from other disputes in society. Such a criterion is the specific legal nature of the public "confrontation" of interests, which underlies the emergence of a legal conflict. That is, such a contradiction is mediated by the phenomena of the legal sphere, for example, the conflict of laws of the legal regulation of certain social relations, etc.

In particular, this may be a violation of consumer rights and in order to protect them, it is necessary to apply measures to the offender of such rights that are aimed to restore violated rights. In the event of the purchase of goods of inadequate quality, a consumer has the right to restore his violated rights, demanding the elimination of the shortcomings of this product. However, it is not always possible to restore violated consumer rights. In case of rough treatment of a consumer, as a result of which he experienced moral suffering and only compensation in court is possible.

A positive effect in the process of the implementation of legal activities is produced by the manifestation of legal empathy – the emotional attitude of a lawyer to the experience of another person who is the subject of legal relations.

Low empathy is synonymous with heartlessness, callousness, indifference (Izotova & Maksimova, 2016). Conversely, too high empathy can cause certain psychological complications in resolving a legal situation. The repetition of legal situations and the occurrence of professional stress leads to the exhaustion of the nervous system of lawyers, emotional breakdowns and neuropsychiatric diseases.

In this regard, in his daily work, a lawyer constantly faces the need to manage emotional states, which cause the problem of finding the most effective ways of emotional regulation and self-regulation in tense and conflict situations of professional activity (Karelina & Reznikova, 2020).

Emotional tension could begin to form from childhood, when there is some deprivation from parents and their psychological traumas continue to influence behavior patterns for a long time (Hughеs & Gibbоns, 2016).

However even in adulthood, a kind of experience of conflict in the achievement of one's goal continues to develop. The reason is that a conflict may arise unintentionally, but after successful achievement of goals using it, a client may already intentionally resort to such conflict behavior again when solving any difficult situations (Dolgova et al., 2016; Kleiman et al., 2016).

In any activity, objective (Barker et al., 2019; Chen et al., 2020) and subjective conditions (Hirsh & Kang, 2016; Jung & Yoon, 2018) contribute to conflict. For example, even during the learning process, objective conditions for conflict interaction may arise: poor material and technical conditions, an unsatisfactory curriculum, treatment from teachers, monotony of activities, failure to complete training tasks.

There are many examples of subjective conditions (Tehrani & Yamini, 2020; Wang et al., 2016) both parties are sure that they are right and do not want to seek compromises, one of the parties points out the slightest misconduct of the other side, but refuses to admit its own inappropriate behavior, one of the parties considers its actions reasonable and respectful, and the actions of others unfair and unacceptable. Incompatibility in temperament (lability and rigidity) between a client and a lawyer (trainee and head of practice), other personal characteristics (susceptibility, irascibility, suspiciousness).

All of these can lead to learning and professional interaction difficulties, stress, insomnia, and more (Baynham-Herd et al., 2018).

Therefore, the use of techniques and means of training lawyers should develop a desire for self-education of will, active self-improvement, conscious control of one's emotional states and skills to regulate one's actions and deeds in difficult conditions.

Problem Statement

Legal activity is associated with a high threshold level of emotional experience. Managing our own emotions, directing our own mental state in the right way is the task that every lawyer needs to solve. At the same time, in everyday life, the subjects of legal relations constantly face insufficient knowledge of ways to manage psychological states and the search for the most effective ways of emotional regulation.

Research Questions

• The authors conduct a study of the effects of conflict interaction among college students (law).
• They identify the features of well-being, activity, mood of college students (future lawyers).
• Moreover, they identify the level of self-assessment of mental states: rigidity, aggressiveness, anxiety, frustration of college students (future lawyers).

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of the study is to conduct a study using a stating experiment and substantiate the features of the conflict interaction of college students.

Research Methods

The study of the emotional states of the participants in the ascertaining experiment was performed in 3 stages (Dolgova & Rokitskaya, 2016).

1. Search and preparatory stage. It is the theoretical study of psychological and pedagogical sources, choice of methods to conduct the experiment. At this stage, we studied the emotional states of participants in the process of consumer protection. The methods were chosen taking into account age and research topics.

2. Experimental stage. It is the experiment itself and processing the research results.

3. Control and summarizing stage. It is the analysis and generalization of the research results, providing recommendations to correct the emotional states of participants in the process of consumer protection.

Research methods and techniques:

Theoretical: literature analysis, synthesis, concretization, generalization.

Empirical: ascertaining experiment, testing by two methods.

The methodology and diagnostics of "WAM" – well-being, activity, mood (V.A. Doskin, N.A. Lavrentieva, M.P. Miroshnikov, V.B. Sharay), consists of 30 bipolar scales, all statements were grouped into three categories: well-being, activity and mood.

The methodology for diagnosing self-assessment of mental states (G. Eysenck) of rigidity, aggressiveness, anxiety, frustration.

The research was performed in Chelyabinsk Bureau of Legal Assistance LLC, where the students of State Budgetary Vocational Educational Institution South Ural State College, majoring in Law, were interned. The age of the subjects at the time of the internship was 19–20 years. The internship was carried out by the participants of the process of consumer rights protection – lawyers.

The study of the characteristics of the team and obtaining consent to conduct psychodiagnostics preceded the ascertaining experiment, the results and discussion of which are presented below.

Findings

The results of the study of self-assessment of the emotional state of students participating in the process of consumer rights protection according to the test "Self-assessment of the emotional state" by G.Yu. Aizenk are shown in Figure 01.

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As it can be seen in Figure 01, the average value of mental states for all four indicators of participants in consumer protection process prevailed.

A high value of anxiety in 15 % (6 people) was characterized by a feeling of fear or apprehension; the average value of 54 % (19 people) was characterized by irritability; a low value – 31 % (11 people) – was characterized by calmness, stability in stressful situations.

10 % (4 people) had a high value of frustration – they were characterized by low self-esteem, avoidance of difficulties, fear of failure; the average value of 46 % (16 people) – was characterized by normal self-esteem, worry about failures; low value – 44 % (16 people) – did not have high self-esteem, they were resistant to failures and not afraid of difficulties.

8 % (3 people) had a high value of aggressiveness – they were characterized by inconsistency, there were difficulties in communicating with people; 69 % (24 people) had average value, sometimes they showed aggressiveness; 23 % (9 people) had a low value, they were characterized by calmness, restraint. 15 % (5 people) had a high value of rigidity – they were characterized by the invariability of behavior, beliefs, attitudes, even if they diverged, they did not correspond to the real situation, life; 85 % (31 people) had the average value – they were characterized by the difficulty of changing views, attitudes in new conditions; 0 % (0 people) had low value, they were characterized by easy switching.

Let us analyze the results obtained using the "WAM" method (N.A. Lavrentyeva, V.A. Doskin, M.P. Miroshnikova, V.B. Sharay.)

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As we can see in Figure 2, the low value of the indicators of well-being and mood prevailed among the participants in consumer rights protection process during the period of preparation for the examination session.

31 % (11 people) had a high sense of well-being – they were involved in work, they had a lot of energy and strength; average value – 31 % (11 people) – felt a little tired, did not show increased activity, were not so energetic; and a low value – 38 % (14 people) – the subjects had apathy and severe fatigue, felt sick. 10 % (4 people) had a high activity value – the respondents were very mobile, performed tasks at a high speed; the average value – 46 % (16 people) – had an average speed of task completion, average activity; a low value – 44 % (16 people) – were characterized by a lack of understanding of the conditions in which they were fatigue and exhausted. 38 % (14 people) had a high mood value – they had an excellent mood, were friendly, easily reorganized when the situation changed; the average value – 17 % (6 people) – were in a good mood, they were reorganized more slowly in changed conditions, they did not always show goodwill; low value – 44 % (16 people) – they had bad mood, were not friendly, closed in themselves and unable to adjust to the changed conditions.

Conclusion

Thus, the study of the emotional states of college students of Law was carried out in following stages: search and preparatory stage was the theoretical study of psychological and pedagogical sources and the choice of methods to conduct the experiment. At this stage, the study of emotional states was carried out, the characteristics of the emotional states of participants determined the protection of consumer rights. The methods were chosen taking into account age and the topic of the study), experimental (conducting a stating experiment, processing the results. Psychodiagnostics of the subjects was carried out using two methods of "WAM" diagnostics of well-being, mood, activity (N.A. Lavrentyeva, V.A. Doskin, M.P. Miroshnikova, V.B. Sharay.) “Self-assessment of the emotional state” (G.Yu. Aizenk). Then the results were processed, expressed in the form of a histogram), summarizing the results of the study, providing recommendations on the correction of emotional states of the students participating in the process of protection of consumer rights). In order to solve the tasks, the following methods were applied (theoretical ones: synthesis, analysis of literature sources, generalization, concretization; empirical ones: ascertaining experiment and testing).

Based on the results of the ascertaining experiment, we found out that the emotional state of college students was characterized by the average aggressiveness, frustration, anxiety, rigidity.

Correct psychological and pedagogical recommendations and exercises were needed to increase the level of empathy, relieve anxiety and correct the level of aggressiveness.

Acknowledgments

The article was prepared as part of the comprehensive program and plan of research, project and scientific and organizational activities of the scientific center of the Russian academy of education on the basis of South Ural State Humanitarian and Pedagogical University for 2021 South Urals: scientific foundations for development and innovation” and the Grant of Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute named after V.I. M.E. Evsevyev (supervisor Dolgova V.I.).

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