About

Peter T. Coleman is a Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. He serves as the Director of the Morton Deutsch International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (MD-ICCCR) and Co-Director of the Advanced Consortium for Cooperation, Conflict, and Complexity (AC4). Additionally, he is a Special Advisor to the President and Provost at Columbia on Community. His scholarly interests include conflict resolution, leadership, politics and education, conflict intelligence, systemic wisdom, adaptive negotiation and mediation, cross-cultural conflict, political polarization, organizational development, intractable conflict dynamics, and sustainable peace. Coleman holds a Ph.D. and M.Phil. from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a B.A. from the University of Iowa. He has authored numerous books, articles, and chapters on conflict and peacebuilding, and his work emphasizes understanding complex systems, dynamical models, and meta-competencies necessary for engaging conflict in a complex, dynamic world.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Social Science
• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Development economics
• Economics
• Chemistry
• Environmental science
• Environmental ethics
• Political economy
• Law

Selected publications

• Machine Learning Classification of Peaceful Countries: A Comparative Analysis and Dataset Optimization

  2025-03-19

  article

  We used a machine learning approach to classify countries as peaceful or non-peaceful by analyzing linguistic patterns in global media articles. Utilizing vector embeddings and cosine similarity, we develop a supervised classification model that achieves 94% accuracy in distinguishing peaceful contexts. We also examine the impact of dataset size on model performance, finding that while larger datasets improve accuracy, smaller datasets still provide valuable insights. Our calculated peace percentages correlate strongly with the Human Development Index (HDI), validating our methodology. This study highlights the potential of advanced AI techniques in peace studies and underscores the importance of data quality and representativeness. Future work includes developing real-time monitoring tools and addressing training data biases to enhance model accuracy.

  PublisherDOI

• Conflict-Intelligent Leadership: Rescuing a World on Fire

  Negotiation Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract In an era of extreme uncertainty, toxic polarization, and multifront crises, leaders of all stripes face conflicts that threaten to destabilize organizations and derail missions. This article offers conflict-intelligent leadership as a critical paradigm for navigating complex conflicts, and presents the RESCUE framework, an evidence-based model for conflict-intelligent leadership facing crises. Drawing on research in psychology, conflict resolution, complexity science, and wildfire ecology, the RESCUE model delineates six integrative phases of stewardship in crises: (R) Radical Clarity through self-awareness and anticipation; (E) Effective Communication and deep transparency; (S) Strategic Adaptivity and flexible decision-making; (C) Conflict-Safe Environments that leverage dissent; (U) Unified Structural Institutionalization with systematic learning; and (E) Enduring Resilience and growth outcomes. The article highlights how conflict-intelligent leadership is derived from sound theory and research, grounded in multilevel competencies (self, social, situational, structural, systemic), and realized through a set of practical principles, which are best implemented in crises through a coherent, emergency-response framework. Future research directions are proposed and implications are discussed for leadership development. By reframing conflict as a source of information and innovation rather than mere risk, the RESCUE framework offers a road map for leaders to “rescue” their organizations from destructive discord and catalyze sustainable resilience.

  PublisherDOI

• Words that Represent Peace

  2025-03-19

  articleSenior author

  We used data from LexisNexis to determine the words in news media that were most important in classifying countries as higher or lower peace using logistic regression, support vector machines, decision trees, and random forest as classifiers. We then embedded those words using the multilingual-e5-large-instruct model, obtaining high-dimensional representations of each word’s semantic meaning. PCA allowed us to transform the word embeddings into a two-dimensional space, facilitating visual interpretation of the relationships and clusters among the words. With the data transformed into a 2D space, we applied K-means clustering to identify distinct groups or clusters of words that shared similar characteristics. We found that higher peace news is characterized by themes of finance, daily activities, and health and that lower peace news is characterized by themes of politics, government, and legal issues. This work provides a starting point to measure levels of peace and identify the social processes that underly those words.

  PublisherDOI

• Classifying Peace in Global Media Using RAG and Intergroup Reciprocity

  2025-03-19

  article

  We used a novel methodology for analyzing peace representations in global media by integrating a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model with refined concepts of Positive and Negative Intergroup Reciprocity (PIR/NIR). Traditional analyses often overlook nuanced intergroup dynamics. By refining PIR and NIR definitions, we provide a precise framework to assess media portrayals of intergroup relations influencing peace. Using the News On the Web dataset of 700,000 articles from 18 countries, we employed machine learning to embed articles and identify PIR and NIR instances. This allowed us to classify countries based on their media’s alignment with these concepts. Our findings reveal significant variations, with some media emphasizing intergroup tolerance and others highlighting aggression. Comparing our PIR/NIR analysis with traditional peace indices, we demonstrate that our approach offers deeper insights into factors influencing national peace. This has significant implications for peace building, high lighting the critical role of media in shaping peace.

  PublisherDOI

• Navigating tension for diversity, equity, inclusion and justice: organizational activist strategies and considerations

  Equality Diversity and Inclusion An International Journal · 2025-10-13

  article

  Purpose We explore how organizational activists (OAs) navigate tension for diversity, equity, inclusion and justice (DEIJ) in the workplace. Design/methodology/approach From interviews, we examine how OAs understand and work with tension to further organizational DEIJ. Findings OAs used strategies that were either more overt or covert, and either aimed at increasing tension or building capacity to handle tension. Based on these two dimensions, four strategies utilized by OAs to navigate tension for DEIJ emerged: advocating, subverting, facilitating and healing. Research limitations/implications This paper reconceptualizes how OAs work with tension in practice, offering a typology of strategies for navigating tension, including tactics aimed at amplifying tension and building the capacity to handle tension. Practical implications Based on findings, this paper offers a menu of tactics OAs might consider, as well as a framework to help assess which strategies may be most appropriate for a given scenario and offers organizations strategies to support OAs committed to DEIJ. Originality/value This paper expands the scope of strategies used by OAs and offers insights into how OAs consider tension in practice.

  PublisherDOI

• What motivates bridge building across pernicious group divides? The effects of regulatory motives, framing, and fit on increasing constructive engagement across political and racial divisions

  Frontiers in Social Psychology · 2024-03-26 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Introduction Today, the U.S. and countless other democracies have found themselves dangerously divided across political and racial-ethnic differences. Under these conditions, more extreme actors often wield disproportionate influence, with moderate citizens tending to disengage politically, sparking a vicious cycle. Methods Six studies ( N = 2,179) were conducted to investigate ways to mobilize citizens to engage in bridge-building activities fostering intergroup tolerance and compassion. Derived from basic regulatory theories of motivation, we tested the effects of stronger prevention (mitigating negative outcomes) vs. promotion (seeking ideal outcomes) and assessment (evaluating the best way to proceed) vs. locomotion (just “getting it done”) motivational orientations and the fit vs. non-fit framing effects of how the activities were presented on differences in engagement with political and racial bridge-building activities across political, racial , and gender groups in the U.S. We hypothesized that individuals with stronger levels of each of the four motivational mindsets would be more likely to express willingness to engage in bridging activities when they were framed in ways consistent (fitting) vs. inconsistent (non-fitting) with their more chronic orientations. Results and discussion Findings supported our hypotheses with some qualifiers and revealed important political, racial, and gender group differences on motivation and bridge-building for different types of engagement activities.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• One style does not fit all: the relationship of mediator behavioral adaptivity to mediator empowerment, efficacy, and satisfaction

  International Journal of Conflict Management · 2024-09-30 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  Purpose Prior research on the situated model of mediation has suggested that mediators’ abilities to be more flexible and adaptive in responding to potential derailers in mediation situations lead to better outcomes. The purpose if this paper is to build on this theory and research by developing a new scale of mediator behavioral adaptivity and investigating the hypothesized effects of mediator adaptivity on their sense of efficacy, empowerment and satisfaction when mediating. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents findings from two survey studies with currently active, experienced mediators. Findings The findings offer a new scale for the study of effective mediation – the mediator behavioral adaptivity scale – and offer support for the hypothesis that mediators reporting an ability to use more diverse behavioral tactics and strategies (both standard and specialized strategies) report higher levels of satisfaction with mediation outcomes as well as more self-efficacy and empowerment during mediations. Research limitations/implications These studies are both self-report and correlational and so should be supplemented by subsequent research using experimental methods and more objective measures of mediation outcomes. Originality/value The program of research extended in this paper offers a new integrative model of adaptive mediation, which aims to provide evidence-based guidelines for using different types of mediation strategies in categorically different conflict situations. The model can ultimately help the field transcend discussions of preferred or best mediation styles and focus instead on how distinct strategies offer different degrees of fit for different types of mediation challenges.

  PublisherDOI

• Teaching Peace Top-down, Bottom-up, or Both? Navigating Basic Dilemmas in Cross-Cultural Conflict Resolution Education

  Negotiation Journal · 2024-01-01 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Despite decades of calls by the international community for the need to pivot the primary approach to cross-cultural conflict resolution education away from privileging Western, prescriptive models and methods of outside educators toward those based on the knowledge and expertise of local stakeholders, the dominant top-down paradigm persists. This article presents a new framework for cross-cultural conflict resolution education that builds on John Paul Lederach’s original distinction between prescriptive (top-down) versus elicitive (bottom-up) approaches, and extends it through grounded-theory research with expert practitioners working across cultures in conflict zones. The result is a contingency approach to working adaptively across different types of cross-cultural situations—based on five key factors—as well as insights into enacting hybrid combinations of both approaches. The implications and next steps for research and practice are discussed.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Navigating Firestorms: The Imperative of Conflict-Intelligent Leadership in a Turbulent World

  Negotiation Journal · 2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article offers a novel framework for conceptualizing conflict-intelligent leadership, which builds on evidence-based practices for constructive conflict resolution but extends and enhances them with new insights and strategies gleaned from complexity science. It argues that the development of conflict intelligence (CIQ) requires a broadening of one’s orientation to conflict across four levels: from a focus on and awareness of the self (implicit beliefs, emotional reactions, and ability to self-regulate), to a focus on social dynamics (interpersonal, intergroup, and moral conflict dynamics), as well as situational dynamics (conflicts in fundamentally different contexts), and ultimately to a focus on the broader systemic forces that may determine and be determined by more entrenched conflicts. The article defines CIQ, outlines the competencies and skills conducive to increasing it at each level, and offers a set of “toolkits,” with links to relevant resources such as online assessments, “just-in-time” apps, and popular articles. The aim of this article is to offer leaders a road map; a common vision, language, and skill set for navigating our often dizzying, contentious new world.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Intellectual humility is reliably associated with constructive responses to conflict

  PLoS ONE · 2024-09-06 · 17 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Conflict is a ubiquitous, but potentially destructive, feature of social life. In the current research, we argue that intellectual humility-the awareness of one's intellectual fallibility-plays an important role in promoting constructive responses and decreasing destructive responses to conflict in different contexts. In Study 1, we examine the role of intellectual humility in interpersonal conflicts with friends and family members. In Study 2, we extend this finding to workplace conflicts. In both studies we find that intellectual humility predicts more constructive and less destructive responses to conflict. This work extends the burgeoning literature on the benefits of intellectual humility by demonstrating its association with responses that help defuse conflictual encounters.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Andrzej Nowak

  University of Warsaw

  47 shared

• Katharina G. Kugler

  Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

  44 shared

• Robin R. Vallacher

  35 shared

• Larry S. Liebovitch

  32 shared

• Lan Bui‐Wrzosinska

  Uniwersytet SWPS

  31 shared

• Andrea Bartolí

  14 shared

• Morton Deutsch

  Columbia University

  8 shared

• Linda LaRocque

  Simon Fraser University

  7 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Teachers College, Columbia University

• Other

  Teachers College, Columbia University

• B.A.

  University of Iowa