Cultural influences on cognitive representations of conflict: Interpretations of conflict episodes in the United States and Japan.

Abstract

This article integrates theory from the cognitive tradition in negotiation with theory on culture and examines cultural influences on cognitive representations of conflict.The authors predicted that although there may be universal (etic) dimensions of conflict construals, there also may be culture specific (emic) representations of conflict in the United States and Japan.Results of multidimensional scaling analyses of U.S. and Japanese conflict episodes supported this view.Japanese and Americans construed conflicts through a compromise versus win frame (R. L. Pinkley, 1990), providing evidence of a universal dimension of conflict construal.As the authors predicted, Japanese perceived conflicts to be more comprom/se-focused, as compared with Americans.There were also unique dimensions of construal among Americans and Japanese (infringements to self and giri violations, respectively), suggesting that identical conflict episodes are perceived differently across cultures. Cultural Influences on CognitiveRepresentations of Conflict 3Conflict is ubiquitous and has been the subject of scientific inquiry throughout the past century.Indeed, conflict is likely found in most human civilizations and across historical periods.Nevertheless, within the discipline of psychology, the scientific study of conflict has been limited primarily to U.S.samples and may be laden with individualistic assumptions (Gray, 1994).In this respect, our understanding of conflict remains largely "culture-bound" (i.e., has its roots in Euro-American thought and traditions) and "culture-blind" (i.e., tends to ignore culture in its theories and research; Erez, 1994;Smith & Bond, 1999).In an era of increasing globalization, an understanding of cultural influences on conflict has both theoretical and practical importance.The purpose of this research is to shed new light on the relationship among culture, cognition, and conflict by integrating theory from one of the main theoretical traditions in negotiation, the cognitive tradition (Neale & Bazerman, 1991;Pinkley, 1990), with theory on elements of culture, namely, individualism-collectivism (Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Triandis, 1995).More specifically, the question that guided this research was: Are the dimensions used to evaluate conflict situations universal (etic), or are they culture-specific (emic)?The general proposition advanced in this article is that although there may be universal dimensions of conflict construals, disputants' cognitive representations are influenced by the conception of the self that is dominant in the surrounding culture (individualistic vs. collectivistic), and thus, cognitive representations of conflict vary across cultures.We expected that identical conflict episodes would be construed differently in two cultures, the United States and Japan, which have been shown to systematically differ along the individualism-collectivism dimension (Hofstede, 1980;Markus & Kitayama, 1991;Schwartz, 1994;Triandis, 1995).In what follows, we first discuss the nature of cognition in conflict situations and the dimensions of conflict construal that have been found in previous research among disputants in the United States.We then consider the implications of culture for cognitive Cultural Influences on Cognitive Representations of Conflict 4representations of conflicts and discuss the nature of the self and cognition in the United States and Japan.Finally, we describe a multidimensional scaling (MDS) study that investigated cultural influences on conflict construals. Cognition in Conflict and NegotiationNegotiation has been defined as "the deliberate interaction of two or more complex social units which are attempting to define or redefine the terms of their interdependence" (Walton & McKersie, 1965, p. 3).According to the cognitive tradition (Bazerman & Neale, 1983;Thompson, 1990), negotiation processes and outcomes can be best understood when negotiations are viewed as a cognitive decisionmaking task in which negotiators construct mental representations of the conflict situation, issues, and their opponents.In other words, bargainers enter the negotiation with cognitive representations, or conflict frames, which serve to impart meaning or make sense of the conflict situation (Pinkley, 1990;Putnam & Holmer, 1992) and which often take place below the level of conscious awareness (Drake & Donohue, 1994).Frames are akin to schemas, or organized knowledge structures that guide negotiators' selection and interpretation of information, and thus lead to a particular focus on some characteristics of a conflict situation while ignoring others.In essence, because conflict situations often contain many elements and because negotiators have limited information-processing capabilities (Neale & Bazerman, 1991), frames enable negotiators to render some of the elements to the "figure" and others to the "ground" (Goffman, 1974).Consistent with this view, research in the cognitive tradition has concentrated on identifying the specific ways in which conflicts are defined or framed.Over the past two decades, a number of studies in the United States have demonstrated that conflict frames are reliable and can be systematically Cultural Influences on Cognitive Representations of Conflict 5 described (see Pruitt & Carnevale, 1993, for a review).Most recently, in a landmark study that integrated and extended previous research on conflict frames (Bazerman & Carroll, 1987; Kelley &