Chapter 8 Managing Conflict in Relationships 223indirect verbal messages and nonverbal communication than on what is actually
said in high-context cultures. In low-context cultures, people are expected to be
more verbally direct and say what they mean.
When applied to conflict, European Americans tend to take an individualist
and low-context approach, whereas Latinos and Asians are more collectivist and
high context (Ting-Toomey & Oetzel 2002). European Americans, for example,
tend to view conflict as a necessary way to work out problems and feel that
specific conflict issues should be worked out separately from relational issues. For
Latinos and Asians, on the other hand, conflict is perceived as having a negative
effect on relational harmony, and conflict issues cannot be divorced from rela-
tionships. Indeed, cross-cultural research finds that people living in high-context
cultures (for example, India and Thailand) prefer to avoid conflict altogether or
give in to the other person’s wishes, whereas people in low-context cultures (for
example, the United States and Ireland) prefer to engage in conflict more openly
and competitively (Croucher et al., 2012). In addition, communication during
conflict in individualist, low-context cultures is expected to be clear and direct,
whereas in collectivist, high-context cultures, people are supposed to pick up
on subtle cues and vague verbal messages (Merkin, 2009). Understanding these
important cultural distinctions can help us understand how confusion, frustra-
tion, and miscommunication can happen when conflict arises.
Co-Cultures
In the film The Kids Are All Right, mothers Jules and Nic are worried about their
teenaged son, Laser, who appears withdrawn. They ask him, over and over, if
there’s anything he wants to talk about. They complain that his friend Clay is a
bad influence. They ask him for reasons why he sought out his biological father
without telling them. But Laser simply does not want to talk. Although such nag-
ging female/noncommunicative male stereotypes are standard in fiction and film,
there is some evidence to suggest that, in fact, women are more inclined to voice
criticisms and complaints, and men tend to avoid engaging in such discussions.
IN THE KIDS ARE ALL
RIGHT, mothers Jules and
Nic and their adolescent son
Laser play out the typical
imbalance of communicative-
ness between females and
males. MANDALAY/SAINT AIRE/
10TH HOLE/ANTIDOTE / THE KOBAL
COLLECTION