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Initial Contacts with the Disputing Parties 5 7 interviews, and the content of interviews. More will be said about entry strategies for data collection in Chapter Five. Initiation of Mediation and Problem Solving. The timing of mediator intervention to solve problems, as opposed to col- lecting data, is one of the most intensely debated topics in the dispute resolution field (Simkin, 1971; Kerr, 1954; Carpen- ter and Kennedy, 1979; and Pearson, 1984). Some mediators argue that early intervention limits hostility and emotional damage. Early entry by the mediator may also alleviate the tendency for parties to polarize on substantive issues. Early entry may enable the mediator to prevent a party's hard-line commitment to alternatives that are unacceptable to other dis- putants. Another argument for early intervention concerns proce- dural advantages. Polarization often results when disputants fail to understand productive means or procedures to resolve their controversies. Early intervention can discourage unproductive negotiation behavior, can route the parties toward behavior or procedures that will result in settlement, and can discourage energy-draining responses that may escalate a dispute and create barriers to settlement due to-poor process rather than substan- tive differences. Arguments for later mediator entry into a dispute center on the needs for parties to mobilize their power, to equalize the means they have to influence each other, and to occasionally demonstrate their coercive power before negotiations. Later en- try may also allow for polarization to develop that often clari- fies issues, provides time for the parties to vent emotions, and allows the parties themselves to request the assistance of an im- partial mediator after they have exhausted their own procedural and substantive options. Proponents of later intervention argue that parties need time to mobilize their forces and gather their means of influ- ence in order to affect the other parties involved (Cormick, 1982; Crowfoot, 1980). They claim that early entry hinders this process; that the weaker party, who is not as well prepared for the conflict and therefore has less influence, may be over- whelmed; and that an unfair settlement may be either reached