Reconciling the Preferences of Environmental Activists and Corporate Policymakers.

Although some corporations and environmental groups are beginning to collaborate, the relationship between the more extreme environmental activists (such as Greenpeace) and traditional corporate targets (such as DuPont) still shows many characteristics of "malignant social conflict" (Deutsch & Shichman, 1986, p. 229). To analyze the cognitive nature of this conflict, we used multiple regression-based judgment analysis to generate decision profiles for major environmental policymakers at Greenpeace USA and DuPont. We compared two sets of decision profiles: those specified by each group as an ideological statement and those derived from respondents' assessments of 30 hypothetical environmental policies. Taken alone, both groups' ideological statements differed substantially from their actual judgment behavior; and each group's estimate of its counterpart's decision structure was highly stereotyped. However, the ideological judgment profiles of activists were highly correlated with corporate policymakers, as were their assessments of the hypothetical policies. Despite these commonalities, neither group accepted a compromise set of environmental values, suggesting that their policy impasse wilt continue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]