What distinguishes the two levels, what separates possible attitudes and potential capabilities from active empowered interests and salient capabilities is the perceived situation. The product of perceived situation and distance vector d discriminates between structure and situation. This is shown in Table 10.1 . The perceived situation is latent, however. While interests are engaged within a situation, behavior yet remains unaffected.
Conflict is there, but beneath the surface.
Therefore, the variation in gi d ,i-j for actor i's situation of conflict with j has yet no necessary correlation with the common, manifest behavior of i to j. In a specific perceived situation of conflict g, the common interests and capabilities are theoretical, a cognitive framework for understanding the process of conflict at the level of dispositions and powers. Dynamic interests and relative capabilities transform behavioral potentials into an active tendency, a psychological force towards threatening, protesting, snubbing, attacking, accusing, sanctioning, and so on. But this behavioral disposition, while empowered, is yet latent, unmanifest. How a behavioral disposition will be manifested in what specific behavior depends on the actor's expectation within a situation, the final element in the situation of conflict.