Combat and Nurture point at regions within conversation space, however as commenters on the original pointed out, there are actually quite a few different dimensions relevant to conversations. (Focused on truth-seeking conversations.)
Some of them:
Competitive vs Cooperative: within a conversation, is there any sense of one side trying to win against the others? Is there a notion of “my ideas” vs “your ideas”? Or is there just us trying to figure it out together.
Charitability is a related concept.
Willingness to Update: how likely are participants to change their position within a conversation in response to what’s said?
Directness & Bluntness: how straightforwardly do people speak? Do they say “you’re absolutely wrong” or do they say, “I think that maybe what you’re saying is not 100%, completely correct in all ways”?
Filtering: Do people avoid saying things in order to avoid upsetting or offending others?
Degree of Concern for Emotions: How much time/effort/attention is devoted to ensuring that others feel good and have a good experience? How much value is placed on this?
Overhead: how much effort must be expended to produce acceptable speech acts? How many words of caveats, clarification, softening? How carefully are the words chosen?
Concern for Non-Truth Consequences: how much are conversation participants worried about the effects of their speech on things other than obtaining truth? Are people worrying about reputation, offense, etc?
Playfulness & Seriousness: is it okay to make jokes? Do participants feel like they can be silly? Or is it no laughing business, too much at stake, etc.?
Maximizing or Minimizing the Scope of Disagreement: are participants trying to find all the ways in which they agree and/or sidestep points of disagreement, or are they clashing and bringing to the fore every aspect of disagreement? [See this comment by Benquo.]
Similarly, it’s worth noting the different objectives conversations can have:
Figuring out what’s true / exchanging information.
Jointly trying to figure out what’s true vs trying to convince the other person.
Fun and enjoyment.
Connection and relationship building.
The above are conversational objectives that people can share. There are also objectives that most directly belong to individuals:
To impress others.
To harm the reputation of others.
To gain information selfishly.
To enjoy themselves (benignly or malignantly).
To be helpful (for personal or altruistic gain).
To develop relationships and connection.
We can see which positions along these dimensions cluster together and which correspond to the particular clusters that are Combat and Nurture.
A Combat Culture is going to be relatively high on bluntness and directness, can be more competitive (though isn’t strictly); if there is concern for emotions, it’s going be a lower priority and probably less effort will be invested.
A Nurture Culture may inherently be prioritizing the relationships between and experiences of participants more. Greater filtering of what’s said will take place and people might worry more about reputational effects of what gets said.
These aren’t exact and different people will focus on cultures which differ along all of these dimensions. I think of Combat vs Nurture as tracking an upstream generator that impacts how various downstream parameters get set.
Appendix 1: Conversational Dimensions
Combat and Nurture point at regions within conversation space, however as commenters on the original pointed out, there are actually quite a few different dimensions relevant to conversations. (Focused on truth-seeking conversations.)
Some of them:
Competitive vs Cooperative: within a conversation, is there any sense of one side trying to win against the others? Is there a notion of “my ideas” vs “your ideas”? Or is there just us trying to figure it out together.
Charitability is a related concept.
Willingness to Update: how likely are participants to change their position within a conversation in response to what’s said?
Directness & Bluntness: how straightforwardly do people speak? Do they say “you’re absolutely wrong” or do they say, “I think that maybe what you’re saying is not 100%, completely correct in all ways”?
Filtering: Do people avoid saying things in order to avoid upsetting or offending others?
Degree of Concern for Emotions: How much time/effort/attention is devoted to ensuring that others feel good and have a good experience? How much value is placed on this?
Overhead: how much effort must be expended to produce acceptable speech acts? How many words of caveats, clarification, softening? How carefully are the words chosen?
Concern for Non-Truth Consequences: how much are conversation participants worried about the effects of their speech on things other than obtaining truth? Are people worrying about reputation, offense, etc?
Playfulness & Seriousness: is it okay to make jokes? Do participants feel like they can be silly? Or is it no laughing business, too much at stake, etc.?
Maximizing or Minimizing the Scope of Disagreement: are participants trying to find all the ways in which they agree and/or sidestep points of disagreement, or are they clashing and bringing to the fore every aspect of disagreement? [See this comment by Benquo.]
Similarly, it’s worth noting the different objectives conversations can have:
Figuring out what’s true / exchanging information.
Jointly trying to figure out what’s true vs trying to convince the other person.
Fun and enjoyment.
Connection and relationship building.
The above are conversational objectives that people can share. There are also objectives that most directly belong to individuals:
To impress others.
To harm the reputation of others.
To gain information selfishly.
To enjoy themselves (benignly or malignantly).
To be helpful (for personal or altruistic gain).
To develop relationships and connection.
We can see which positions along these dimensions cluster together and which correspond to the particular clusters that are Combat and Nurture.
A Combat Culture is going to be relatively high on bluntness and directness, can be more competitive (though isn’t strictly); if there is concern for emotions, it’s going be a lower priority and probably less effort will be invested.
A Nurture Culture may inherently be prioritizing the relationships between and experiences of participants more. Greater filtering of what’s said will take place and people might worry more about reputational effects of what gets said.
These aren’t exact and different people will focus on cultures which differ along all of these dimensions. I think of Combat vs Nurture as tracking an upstream generator that impacts how various downstream parameters get set.