Sun Tzu
The Psychology of Conflict
Introduction
Sun Tzu is a legendary military strategist who revolutionized war and combat as we know it. Not much precise information is known about Sun Tzu but he is most famously known for his book The Art of War, a guide on how to successfully engage in conflict and battle. Sun Tzu was a Chinese general, leader, philosopher and writer, whose military strategy goes beyond the battlefield and has implications in our daily life.
Sun Tzu approached war from a psychological perspective, an atypical way to approach battle in ancient China.2 While originally ordained as a concise guide for the military in premodern times, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War continues to be a bestseller and a household name for thousands worldwide. Its teachings have a particularly strong hold in business schools across the globe.2
Despite his military background, Sun Tzu claimed that the best way to win a battle was not through direct fighting. Departing from the typical violent strategies of premodern times, The Art of War makes claims that the best victories were possible without fighting.3 Tzu advocated that fighting should be the last option, not the first, and only done when absolutely necessary. However, when battle was necessary, it had to be well thought out. Because of his more logical and psychological approach to battle, Tzu’s methodology can be useful in exploring all kinds of conflict in our lives.
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
– Sun Tzu [4]
About the Authors
Dan Pilat
Dan is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at The Decision Lab. He is a bestselling author of Intention - a book he wrote with Wiley on the mindful application of behavioral science in organizations. Dan has a background in organizational decision making, with a BComm in Decision & Information Systems from McGill University. He has worked on enterprise-level behavioral architecture at TD Securities and BMO Capital Markets, where he advised management on the implementation of systems processing billions of dollars per week. Driven by an appetite for the latest in technology, Dan created a course on business intelligence and lectured at McGill University, and has applied behavioral science to topics such as augmented and virtual reality.
Dr. Sekoul Krastev
Dr. Sekoul Krastev is a decision scientist and Co-Founder of The Decision Lab, one of the world's leading behavioral science consultancies. His team works with large organizations—Fortune 500 companies, governments, foundations and supernationals—to apply behavioral science and decision theory for social good. He holds a PhD in neuroscience from McGill University and is currently a visiting scholar at NYU. His work has been featured in academic journals as well as in The New York Times, Forbes, and Bloomberg. He is also the author of Intention (Wiley, 2024), a bestselling book on the science of human agency. Before founding The Decision Lab, he worked at the Boston Consulting Group and Google.
