The Predictability Of Self-construal Over Face Concern And Conflict Style

Under the globalized environment, intercultural encounters are nowadays more common than rare. Miscommunication and misattribution can easily occur, since people from different cultures often have different goals, norms, values, and assumptions toward various issues, which can create or intensify conflict situations. We can manage conflict between people with distinct perceptions and styles in a constructive manner, if equipped with growing awareness of cultural diversity, especially in increased dramatically interest in self-construal and face concern. As a result, this paper seeks to articulate the predictability of self-construal to conflict styles and the diversity of Chinese and American self-construals by sampling the fruits of a decade of research on this topic and provides a new perspective of constructive cross-cultural interaction.By the present study, cultural aspects of conflict management is investigated via self-construals, which is put forward as a preferable, better perhaps, predictor to explain the cultural differences in individual-level behavior. A growing body of theory and research, particularly with respect to comparisons of individualistic/collectivistic-oriented cultures, has lent support to the idea that in many respects the self is a cultural construction. Considerable research has been undertaken into the cross-cultural differences in self-construals, with a body suggesting a dichotomy between independent self-construals, being characterized by individualism, autonomy, and interdependent self-construal, being characterized by embeddedness and relatedness. People with different self-construals have different types of face needs, which leads to proneness to different styles of conflict management. Drawing upon Markus and Kitayama's self-construal and Stella Ting-Toomey's Face Negotiation Theory, self-construal and its effect on cultural differences in self-face, other-face and mutual-face concerns are discussed to explain cultural dissimilarities in conflict behavior and considered as a major step toward creating a healthy and successful communication.