Entrapment in Escalating Conflicts: A Social Psychological Analysis

It was just over 12 years ago that we first sat down together to talk about psychological traps. In the relative calm of late afternoons, feet draped casually over the seedy furnishings of the Tufts psychology department, we entertained each other with personal anecdotes about old cars, times spent lost on hold, and the Shakespearean concerns of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Lord and Lady Macbeth, and other notables. Eventually, informed by our many illustrations and the excitement that the...