A Qualitative Comparative Study Of Conflict Between Men's And Women's Same-Gender Friendship Among Shanghai College Students

Conflict studies have always been an important topic among communication scholars. Interpersonal conflict in different contexts, such as classroom, family or marriage, which is closely related to our daily life, has been attracting much attention. However, studies concerning friendship conflict are not as prolific as the above mentioned ones. In fact, friendship is not an"unmixed blessing"without conflict or negative emotion. This thesis explores and compares men and women's friendship conflict by interviewing 10 male and 10 female Shanghai college students.The thesis first briefly introduces the two research questions and thesis structure, then defines the key concepts concerned and reviews some significant theories from both China and abroad. Detailed information concerning the research methodology is also introduced. The thesis explores and compares men and women's friendship conflict among Shanghai college students from five components: perception of same-gender friendship and friendship conflict, conflict reasons, conflict orientations, conflict responses and conflict outcomes, among which the part of conflict responses is the focus of the thesis. Seven conflict styles or strategies are explored: talking, accommodating, confronting, soothing, compromising, third-party help and withdrawal. In comparison, men are more apt to talk openly in case a major problem arises. Women show higher concern for their same-gender relationships than men, who are more concerned about face when deciding to talk or to accommodate. Men tend to adopt confrontation more frequently than women, but women adopt soothing more frequently than men. The other three strategies are less mentioned, but no big gender difference emerges concerning the last three ones.In the thesis study, it appears that men and women Shanghai college students are more similar than different from an overall perspective. Gender does not exert the primary effect on people's conflict management behavior. Other factors such as personality, setting, and region may also influence people's choice of conflict style.