Culture, Face Maintenance, and Styles of Handling Interpersonal Conflict: A Study in Five Cultures

Abstract

The objective of this study was to test Ting‐Toomey's (1988a) theory on conflict face‐negotiation. More specifically, the study examined the relationship between face maintenance dimensions and conflict styles in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. The results were summarized as follows: (1) Cultural variability of individualism‐collectivism influences two face maintenance dimensions—self‐face concern and other‐face concern; (2) Cultural variability influences conflict styles, with U.S. members using a higher degree of dominating conflict style than their Japanese and Korean cohorts, and the Chinese and Taiwanese members using a higher degree of obliging and avoiding conflict management styles than their U.S. counterparts; (3) Overall, face maintenance dimensions served as better predictors to conflict styles rather than conflict styles to face dimensions; (4) Self‐face maintenance was associated strongly with dominating conflict style, and other‐face maintenance was associated strongly with avoiding, integrating, and compromising styles of conflict management. Directions for future testing of the conflict face‐negotiation theory were proffered.

"Cultural Values, Emotional Intelligence, and Conflict Handling Styles: A Global Study"

“…Dominating (forcing) is more often used in individualistic cultures than collectivistic cultures. Yet, Ting-Toomey et al (1991) show that obliging is more often used in collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures.…”

“…Building upon the assumption that individual preferences in general (e.g., Bowles, 1998) and individual preferences of handling conflicts in particular (e.g., Elsayed-EkJiouly & Buda, 1996;Kirkbride, Tang, & Westwood, 1991;Ting-Toomey et al, 1991;Wang, Lin, Chan, & Shi, 2005) are culture specific, we develop hypotheses that link cultural value dimensions to the general tendency that an individual prefers some conflict handling styles over others. In the literature several concepts of culture are present to understand and measure the effect of culture on various outcomes (e.g., Hofstede, 1980;Hofstede, Hofstede, & Minkov, 2010;House et al, 2004;Inglehart, 1997;Schwartz, 1994Schwartz, , 2006Triandis, 1995;Triandis & Gelfand, 1998).…”

“…One potential explanation for the mixed findings might be that previous studies have often failed to consider the culture-specific pattern of emotional intelligence (Gunkel, Schlä gel, & Engle, 2014;Miller, 1997;Shao, Doucet, & Caruso, 2014). While previous studies have shown that preferences for conflict handling styles vary substantially across countries (e.g., Doucet, Jehn, Weldon, Chen, & Wang, 2009;Gabrielidis, Stephan, Ybarra, Pearson, & Villareal, 1997;Kim, Wang, Kondo, & Kim, 2007;Posthuma, White, Dworkin, Yá nez, & Swift, 2006;Ting-Toomey et al, 1991), only a small number of studies (e.g., Kaushal & Kwantes, 2006;Komarraju, Dollinger, & Lovell, 2008;Morris et al, 1998) has analyzed the underlying reasons for these differences. Prior research suggests that differences in individuals' orientation toward different cultural value dimensions (i.e., the set of aspects that characterize a society according to its apparent place within the continuum of patterns described by the respective aspect) may be one promising explanation for cross-country differences in individual preferences for conflict handling styles (e.g., Holt & DeVore, 2005;Komarraju et al, 2008).…”

Sense of Humor in China: The Role of Individualism, Collectivism, and Facework

“…Facework is communication designed to counteract face threats to self and others (Goffman, 1967), which was found to play significant roles in Chinese interpersonal communication (Gao, 1998). Several measures were developed to assess the constructs of face and facework (Cheung et al, 1996;Ting-Toomey et al, 1991;Ting-Toomey & Oetzel, 2001). In the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI; Cheung et al, 1996), a saving self-face scale was developed with 11 items, which depict the pattern of orientations in an interpersonal and hierarchical connection and social behaviors to enhance one's face and to avoid losing one's face (Cheung et al, 2001).…”

Understanding the integrative approach to conflict management

“…When the class started, each student received a description of a conflict scenario, followed by questions about how they would handle the described situation. The task was a conflict scenario based on Ting-Toomey, Gao, Trubisky, Yang, Kim, Lin, & Nishida (1991), where the participants read the following:…”