How Does Culture Influence Conflict Resolution? A Dynamic Constructive Analysis

Psychologists have taken several approaches to modeling how culture influences the ways individuals negotiate interpersonal conflict. Most common has been the approach of searching for cultural traits, general, stable value-orientations that predict a variety of culturally typical conflict resolution behaviors. Increasingly researchers have adopted a constructivist approach of locating the nexus of cultural influence in the knowledge structures that guide negotiators' judgments and decisions. In this paper, we advocate extending the constructivist approach by incorporating principles from social cognition research on knowledge activation. We develop dynamic constructivist hypotheses about how the influence of culture on negotiation is moderated by stimulus or task that the conflict presents, the social context in with the negotiator is embedded, and the negotiator/perceiver's epistemic state.

[1]  T. Beidelman.  Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture.Marvin Harris , 1982 .

[2]  M. Morris,et al.  Views from Inside and Outside: Integrating Emic and Etic Insights about Culture and Justice Judgment , 1999 .

[3]  Michele J. Gelfand,et al.  A Cultural Perspective on Negotiation: Progress, Pitfalls, and Prospects , 2000 .

[4]  Michael Harris Bond,et al.  Linking person perception to behavioural intention across cultures: The role of cultural collectivis , 1984 .

[5]  M. Morris,et al.  Culture and Cause: American and Chinese Attributions for Social and Physical Events , 1994 .

[6]  Roger C. Schank,et al.  Scripts, plans, goals and understanding: an inquiry into human knowledge structures , 1978 .

[7]  Motoki Watabe,et al.  Uncertainty, Trust, and Commitment Formation in the United States and Japan1 , 1998, American Journal of Sociology.

[8]  R. Rosaldo,et al.  Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. , 1990 .

[9]  Chi-yue Chiu,et al.  Component ideas of individualism, collectivism, and social organization: An application in the study of Chinese culture. , 1994 .

[10]  Misperceiving negotiation counterparts : When situationally determined bargaining behaviors are attributed to personality traits , 1999 .

[11]  Joel M. Podolny,et al.  Missing Relations Incorporating Relational Constructs Into Models of Culture , 2000 .

[12]  T. Menon,et al.  Motivated cultural cognition: the impact of implicit cultural theories on dispositional attribution varies as a function of need for closure. , 2000, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[13]  F. Heider.  The psychology of interpersonal relations , 1958 .

[14]  James L. Hilton,et al.  In search of similarity : Stereotypes as naive theories in social categorization , 1998 .

[15]  Catherine H. Tinsley,et al.  Models of conflict resolution in Japanese, German, and American cultures. , 1998 .

[16]  Roderick M. Kramer,et al.  The Psychology of the Social Self , 2001 .

[17]  C. Geertz.  "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding , 1974 .

[18]  John L. Graham,et al.  Brazilian, Japanese, and American Business Negotiations , 1983 .

[19]  Raymond Cohen,et al.  Negotiating across cultures : communication obstacles in international diplomacy , 1991 .

[20]  M. Gelfand,et al.  Individualism-collectivism and accountability in intergroup negotiations. , 1999 .

[21]  E. Higgins.  Knowledge activation: Accessibility, applicability, and salience. , 1996 .

[22]  Arie W. Kruglanski,et al.  Lay epistemic theory in social-cognitive psychology. , 1990 .

[23]  William M. Smith,et al.  A Study of Thinking , 1956 .

[24]  Impression valence constrains social explanations: the case of discounting versus conjunction effects. , 1999, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[25]  P. Berger,et al.  Social Construction of Reality , 1991, The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Mass Media and Society.

[26]  N. Miller,et al.  Psychological principles: II. , 1939 .

[27]  Yohtaro Takano,et al.  An unsupported common view: Comparing Japan and the U.S. on individualism/collectivism , 1999 .

[28]  Dean G. Pruitt,et al.  Looking Tough: The Negotiator Under Constituent Surveillance , 1979 .

[29]  Joanne D. Martin.  Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives , 1992 .

[30]  E. Higgins,et al.  Social psychology: Handbook of basic principles. , 1996 .

[31]  E. Fromm..  Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies , 1936 .

[32]  R. Rohner,et al.  Toward a Conception of Culture for Cross-Cultural Psychology , 1984 .

[33]  Richard P. Larrick,et al.  Conflict Management Style: Accounting for Cross-National Differences , 1998 .

[34]  Sander L. Koole,et al.  On the Seizing and Freezing of Negotiator Inferences: Need for Cognitive Closure Moderates the Use of Heuristics in Negotiation , 1999 .

[35]  G. Hofstede,et al.  Culture′s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values , 1980 .

[36]  R. Rosaldo.  Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis , 1989 .

[37]  C. Lévi-Strauss,et al.  The Savage Mind. , 1967 .

[38]  William Washabaugh,et al.  Emics and Etics: The Insider-Outsider Debate . Edited by Thomas Headlund, Kenneth Pike, and Marvin Harris. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Press, 1990. 226 pp. , 1991, The Journal of Asian Studies.

[39]  C. Macrae,et al.  PROCESSING LOAD AND MEMORY FOR STEREOTYPE-BASED INFORMATION , 1993 .

[40]  Bee Chen Goh.  Negotiating With the Chinese , 1996 .

[41]  C. Chiu,et al.  Multicultural minds. A dynamic constructivist approach to culture and cognition. , 2000, The American psychologist.

[42]  C. Geertz.  The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays , 1975 .

[43]  Laura Nader,et al.  Law in Culture and Society. , 1970 .

[44]  Laura Nader,et al.  Law In Culture And Society , 1997 .

[45]  J. Bruner.  Acts of meaning , 1990 .

[46]  M. Bond,et al.  The Impact of Cultural Collectivism on Reward Allocation , 1984 .

[47]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Thinking too much: introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions. , 1991, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[48]  A. Romney,et al.  Toward a Theory of Culture as Shared Cognitive Structures , 1998 .

[49]  J. Brett,et al.  Inter- and Intracultural Negotiation: U.S. and Japanese Negotiators , 1998 .

[50]  Michael Harris Bond,et al.  The handbook of Chinese psychology. , 1996 .

[51]  Leigh-Wal Doo.  Dispute Settlement in Chinese-American Communities , 1973 .

[52]  D. Keltner,et al.  How Emotions Work: The Social Functions of Emotional Expression in Negotiations , 2000 .

[53]  Waymond Rodgers,et al.  Explorations of Negotiation Behaviors in Ten Foreign Cultures Using a Model Developed in the United States , 1994 .

[54]  Harry C. Triandis,et al.  The measurement of the etic aspects of individualism and collectivism across cultures , 1986 .

[55]  D. Sperber,et al.  Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach , 1998 .

[56]  Stella Ting-Toomey.  The challenge of facework : cross-cultural and interpersonal issues , 1994 .

[57]  A. Goldman.  The centrality of “ningensei” to Japanese negotiating and interpersonal relationships: Implications for U.S.-Japanese communication☆ , 1994 .

[58]  Michael W. Morris,et al.  Reasons as Carriers of Culture: Dynamic vs. Dispositional Models of Cultural Influence on Decision Making. Рассуждения как носители культуры: динамическая и диспозитная модели культурного влияния на принятие решений , 2000 .

[59]  A. Kruglanski,et al.  Effects of Epistemic Motivations on the Use of Accessible Constructs in Social Judgment , 1995 .

[60]  Chi-yue Chiu,et al.  Culture and the construal of agency : Attribution to individual versus group dispositions , 1999 .

[61]  D. Ho,et al.  Face and stereotyped notions about Chinese face behavior. , 1980 .

[62]  Daniel Druckman,et al.  Cultural Differences in Bargaining Behavior , 1976 .

[63]  Jacquetta Hill.  Culture in Mind: Cognition, Culture, and the Problem of Meaning , 1998 .

[64]  E. Higgins,et al.  Handbook of motivation and cognition : foundations of social behavior , 1991 .

[65]  G. Clore,et al.  Social Psychology: Handbook of Basic Principles , 1996 .

[66]  Harry C. Triandis,et al.  Individualism and collectivism: Theory, method, and applications. , 1996 .

[67]  R. M. March.  The Japanese Negotiator: Subtlety and Strategy Beyond Western Logic , 1988 .

[68]  A. Wolfe,et al.  Anthropological contributions to conflict resolution , 2001 .

[69]  G. Murphy,et al.  Converging operations on a basic level in event taxonomies , 1990, Memory & cognition.

[70]  Robin L. Pinkley,et al.  Conflict Frames of Reference: Implications for Dispute Processes and Outcomes , 1994 .

[71]  J. Greenberg,et al.  Suppression, accessibility of death-related thoughts, and cultural worldview defense: exploring the psychodynamics of terror management. , 1997, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[72]  K. Pike,et al.  Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate , 1992 .

[73]  Kuo-shu Yang.  The psychological transformation of the Chinese people as a result of societal modernization. , 1996 .

[74]  Kenneth L. Pike,et al.  Language in relation to a unified theory of the structure of human behavior, 2nd rev. ed. , 1967 .

[75]  Tanya Menon,et al.  Culturally Conferred Conceptions of Agency: A Key to Social Perception of Persons, Groups, and Other Actors , 2001 .

[76]  K. Leung.  Some determinants of reactions to procedural models for conflict resolution: A cross-national study. , 1987 .

[77]  Jørn K. Rognes,et al.  Can a dominating orientation enhance the integrativeness of negotiated agreements? , 1996 .

[78]  R. D'Andrade.  The Development of Cognitive Anthropology , 1995 .

[79]  Maddy Janssens,et al.  A paradigm for confirmatory cross-cultural research in organizational-behavior , 1995 .

[80]  S. Schwartz.  Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries , 1992 .

[81]  J. Francis,et al.  When in Rome? The Effects of Cultural Adaptation on Intercultural Business Negotiations , 1991 .

[82]  Nancy J. Adler,et al.  Strategy implementation: A comparison of face‐to‐face negotiations in the peoples republic of China and the United States , 1992 .

[83]  Shinobu Kitayama,et al.  Culture and basic psychological principles , 1996 .

[84]  Arie W. Kruglanski,et al.  Motivations for judging and knowing: Implications for causal attribution. , 1990 .

[85]  Nozomu Matsubara,et al.  PUNISHMENT AND THE INDIVIDUAL IN THE UNITED STATES AND JAPAN , 1988 .

[86]  Giacomo Mauro DAriano.  The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. , 2002 .

[87]  L. Taylor.  Strategic Interaction , 1972 .