Lecture The Study of Intercultural Communication Key Terms

4.6 Value Differences and Conflict Styles
Another way of understanding cultural variations in intercultural conflict resolution is to look at how cultural values influence conflict management. Cultural values in individualistic societies differ from those in collectivist societies. Individualistic societies place greater importance on the individual than on groups like the family or professional work groups. Individualism is often citied as the most important European American value, as can been seen in the autonomy and independence encouraged in children. For example, children in the United States may be encouraged to leave home at age 18, and older parents often prefer to live on their own rather than with their children. By contrast, people from collectivist societies often live in extended families and value loyalty to groups.
These contrasting values may influence communication patterns. Thus, people from individualistic societies tend to be more concerned with preserving their own self-esteem during conflict, tend to be more direct in their communication, and tend to adopt more controlling, confrontational, and solution-oriented conflict styles. By contrast, people from collectivist societies tend to be more concerned with maintaining group harmony and with preserving the other person’s dignity during conflict. They may take a less direct conversational approach and adopt avoiding and obliging conflict styles.
How people choose to deal with conflict in any situation depends on the type of conflict and on their relationship with the other person. For example, in conflicts involving values and opinions, the Japanese may use the avoiding style more with acquaintances than with close friends. This suggests that, with people they don’t know very well and with whom harmony is not as important, the Japanese use dominating or avoiding styles. However, with close friends, the way to maintain harmony is to work through the conflict using an integrating style.


4.7 Managing Intercultural Conflict. Becoming More Intercultural
What happens when there is conflict in intercultural relationship? One option involves distinguishing between productive and destructive conflict in at least four ways. First, in productive conflict, individuals or groups try to identify the specific problem; in destructive conflict, they make sweeping generalizations and have negative attitudes. For example, in an argument, one shouldn’t say: ”You never do the dishes”, or “You always put me down in front of my friends”. Rather, one should state the specific example of being put down: “Last evening when you criticized me in front of our friends, I felt bad”.
Second, in productive conflict, individuals or groups focus on the original issue; in destructive conflict, they escalate the conflict from the original issues and anything in the relationship is open for reexamination. For example, guests on talk shows discussing extramarital affairs might start by citing a specific affair and then expand the conflict to include any number of prior arguments. The more productive approach would be to talk only about the specific affair.
Third, in productive conflict, individuals or groups direct the discussion toward cooperative problem solving (“How can we work this out?”); in destructive conflict, they try to seize power and use threats and deception (“Either you do what I want, or …”).
Finally, in productive conflict, individuals or groups value leadership that stresses mutually satisfactory outcomes; in destructive conflict, they polarize behind single-minded and militant leadership. In many political conflicts, such as those in the Middle East, people seem to have fallen into this trap, with leaders unwilling to work toward mutually satisfactory outcomes.