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24 The Mediation Process Mediation is also being applied in landlord-tenant con- flicts (Cook, Rochl, and Shepard, 1980), personal injury cases ("AAA Designs ... ," 1984), police work (Folberg and Taylor, 1984), disputes between elderly residents and nursing home owners, and consumer disputes (Ray and Smolover, 1983). The arenas in which mediation is being applied are very broad. If trends continue, the process will be used to resolve a variety of disputes in arenas not conceived of today. Mediation Activities: Moves and Interventions Negotiation is composed of a series of complex activities or "moves" people initiate to resolve their differences and bring the conflict to termination (Goffman, 1969, p. 90). Each move or action a negotiator conducts involves rational decision making in which outcomes of alternative actions are assessed ac- cording to their relationships to the following factors: the moves of the other parties, their standards of behavior, their styles, their perceptiveness and skill, their needs and prefer- ences, their determination, how much information the negotia- tor has about the conflict, his or her personal attributes, and resources available. Mediators, like negotiators, also initiate moves. A move for a mediator is a specific act of intervention or "influence technique" focused on the people in the dispute that encour- ages- the selection of positive actions and inhibits the selection of negative actions relative to the issues in conflict (Galtung, 1975b). The mediator, a specialized negotiator, does not direct- ly effect changes in the disputants by initiating moves; he or she is more of a catalyst. Changes are the result of a combination of the intervenor's moves with the moves of the negotiators (Bon- ner, 1959). In negotiations, people in conflict are faced with a variety of procedural or psychological problems or "critical situations" (Cohen and Smith, 1972) that they must solve or overcome if they are to reach a settlement. All problem-solving groups face these situations, which can be categorized according to size, type, time, and frequency. The largest categories and most fre-