Socio-cognitive conflict and learning: past and present

In the present talk, we contend that dissent with others' points of view should be a customary and promoted activity whenever learning is concerned. Indeed, dissent occurring during group or peer learning favours cognitive development and knowledge acquisition. We present a theory of socio-cognitive conflict, which argues that dissent with one or several partners over a task in which learning is concerned may stimulate task-related cognitive activity and result in progress (Doise & Mugny, 1984). Should, therefore, socio-cognitive conflict be prescribed in educational settings? We address this question by drawing on research in which we found that socio-cognitive conflict is beneficial for learning to the extent that conflict is regulated in an epistemic manner, that is, by focusing on the task or on the knowledge at hand. On the contrary, socio-cognitive conflict can result in detrimental effects whenever conflict is regulated in a relational manner, that is by focusing on status and on interpersonal dominance (Darnon, Buchs, & Butera, 2002). A recent experiment illustrates these dynamics (Darnon, Doll, & Butera, 2007). University students participated in a fictitious computer-mediated interaction about a text with a bogus partner who introduced through her/his rhetoric either an epistemic conflict (a conflict that referred to the content of the text), or a relational conflict (a conflict that questioned participants' competence). Results indicated that compared to the epistemic conflict, the relational conflict enhanced threat and reduced the perceived contribution of the partner. Moreover, when the conflict was epistemic, the stronger the perceived conflict, the more participants said they worked through the problem to understand it better and tried to integrate the two points of views, that is, the more they regulated the conflict in an epistemic way. On the contrary, after a relational conflict, the stronger the perceived conflict, the more participants said they tried to assert they were right and the other person was wrong, that is, the more they engaged in a relational regulation of the conflict. Finally, epistemic conflict elicited better learning than relational conflict.