Works
- Fights, Games, and Debates, 1960
- Prisoner's Dilemma (with Albert M. Chammah), 1965
In Tactics of Organizational Politics
Ideas
The region of validity. For debates, conflicts of ideas, Rapoport proposed that each side first restate the opponent's position to the opponent's satisfaction and acknowledge the region of validity in which that position holds, before offering criticism. The aim is to make the opponent willing to listen in turn. Caveat: The wording here comes from secondary sources and a 1979 study that trained people in the technique (Alexander, Journal of Conflict Resolution); the book's text was not available. The four-step "Rapoport's rules" are Daniel Dennett's later condensation in Intuition Pumps (2013).
What it explains
Rapoport explains why showing that you understand an opponent's case, and where it is right, earns a hearing for your own. Inside organizations it is the basis for disagreeing with a senior colleague without hardening the position you want to move.
Tactics that draw on Anatol Rapoport (1)
In Thinking Tools
Known for
A mathematical psychologist and game theorist who submitted tit for tat, the simplest strategy entered, to both of Robert Axelrod's iterated Prisoner's Dilemma tournaments around 1980, and it won both.