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In this study, we examined the roles of anonymity and social closeness in predicting young women’s perceptions of “sex talk” (i.e., communication about sexual interests, enjoyment, and experiences) and intentions to post such content in cyberspace. We also examined cultural differences among Asian, Latina, and European Americans. A total of 466 undergraduate women from the three cultural groups participated in the online experiment. Participants were randomly assigned to either a low anonymity condition (i.e., Facebook) or a high anonymity condition (i.e., an anonymous online forum) where they were exposed to identical sex talk stimuli. The main findings showed that greater anonymity increased both the level of perceived appropriateness of sex talk posted by other female users and participants’ intentions to post sex talk online themselves. Compared to European American women, Asian and Latina Americans reported greater intentions to post sex talk online and perceived other female users’ sex talk posts as more appropriate. The results of this study prompt educators and practitioners to help young women strategically manage their impressions of sex talk online while being sensitive to women’s cultural backgrounds. They also suggest the need for further support from practitioners, educators, and parents to construct safe spaces for young women to engage open conversations about sexual matters in the digital space.

This study addresses the impact of intergenerational transmission on women’s work–family life. Drawn from the two-generation sample in the Youth Development Study, this study examines the effects of intergenerational similarity in working status, intergenerational communication, and social support on women’s work and family satisfaction. The study controlled for family of origin socioeconomic status, working hours, relationship duration, and number of children. The results show that intergenerational transmission of work–family configurations from mothers to daughters does exist in their general employment status, but the effects on women’s family satisfaction occur mostly through intergenerational communication. Additionally, social support from both work and family is found to have direct and indirect impacts on women’s work and family satisfaction. The findings can be used to advance a tentative model to examine intergenerational transmission effects and verify the importance of social support in promoting women’s functional outcomes at work and home.

The term “team player” originated in a Western cultural context and can be summarized in the form of five task and two social roles. Yet, can these roles be replicated outside of a U.S. context and will their endorsement vary across cultures and employment status? To answer this exploratory question, we collected data from a total of 483 participants comprising 269 U.S. Americans, 110 Chinese, and 104 Koreans. Participants were asked to describe a team player in their native languages. Three coders per cultural group found more than 3,000 coding units based on the seven predetermined team player roles. The results, based on chi-square tests, show that participants from all three cultural groups consider a team player’s responsibilities to be multidimensional, possessing both task competencies and social skills. Nevertheless, the extent to which each culture emphasizes these two dimensions differs. Both U.S. American and Chinese participants prefer a balance between task roles and social roles, whereas Korean participants prioritize task roles over social roles. These findings provide empirical evidence that across the three cultural groups, broadly the same roles are expected of a team player; however, the U.S. and Chinese understandings were more similar than across the two Asian samples, questioning the often simplistic view of Asian cultures as being homogeneous and of Western and Asian cultures being at different ends of a spectrum of difference. Finally, findings suggest that incorporating explicit discussion about what being a team player entails is a necessary step in multicultural workplaces.

This study investigates facework strategies of managing face-threatening acts in intercultural interactions where communicators’ cultural backgrounds are different from each other. Based on a pre-study with U.S. ( n = 89) and Chinese ( n = 76) college students, four scenarios featuring intercultural face-threatening acts were developed, where a Chinese student communicated politely and appropriately according to the Chinese culture, but the exact same act was considered otherwise in U.S. culture. In the main study, U.S. college students ( N = 217) were given these scenarios and asked to report the general level of face needs, perceived face threats, and facework strategies in each scenario. Multilevel analyses (i.e., Hierarchical Linear Modeling) were employed to parse out the different levels of influence in order to understand both separate and joint impacts of situational face threats and individual face needs on facework strategies. Results showed that: 1) intercultural communicators use both mitigating (i.e., fleeing) and aggravating (i.e., fighting) facework strategies, and a slight preference is given to mitigating strategies; 2) facework strategies are more sensitive to particular situational conditions than to individual dispositions; and 3) individuals’ value for others’ face moderates the relationship between situational conditions and facework strategies. The current study provides empirical evidence of challenges in establishing meaningful intercultural relationships by identifying the multiple levels of impact on facework strategies in intercultural communication. Further discussion and implications of the findings are also included.

The current study was designed to examine the impacts of family communication patterns (FCP), relational closeness, and culture on adult children’s conflict styles with their parents. Participants ...

Spiritual beliefs shape ideas about the meaning of life, the moment of death, and the care that must be taken to deliver the body of the loved one to the spiritual realm. This study investigated spiritual beliefs about organ donation for participants in China (n = 364) and the United States (n = 384). Results showed that spiritual connection with the transplant recipient, spiritual concern about removing organs, and attitudes toward organ donation significantly predicted willingness to become an organ donor for participants in both countries. Americans reported being significantly more religious compared to Chinese. However, altruism and religiosity were not significant predictors of willingness to donate organs. Chinese participants showed significantly higher levels of spiritual connection with the potential recipient of transplanted organs. Even so, Chinese participants exhibited more reluctance to become organ donors compared to Americans. Gender differences in organ donation behaviors are also report...

This study analyzed the construct validity of two new measures: the Attitude Toward Conflict Scale and the Mediation Scale. Although both of these measures are still being developed, results of two studies (with 557 participants) suggest that these instruments are valid and reliable measures that might be of use to alternative dispute resolution administrators, other mediation practitioners, and university personnel who deal with conflict as a screening device to measure attitude toward conflict and the mediation process.

Two studies examined whether race of a roommate or a residence hall advisor had any effect on use of mediation for participants from two regions of the United States. Results from the first study showed that European Americans from the Midwest were likely to seek outside help when the roommate was a different race from them. The racial identity of the resident hall advisor did not appear to matter. Participants with stronger ethnic identification made more negative internal attributions about disruptive roommates. The data from the second study collected in the Southeastern United States showed that European Americans were more likely than African Americans to seek third-party help with a disruptive roommate. As in the first study, participants with stronger ethnic identification made more negative internal attributions about difficult roommates. Implications of mediation theory for structuring effective mediation sessions and persuading students to use university residence hall mediation services are dis...

This study investigated cultural differences in apology intentions moderated by the threatened face type and the relationship between interactants. With Chinese and U.S. undergraduate participants, this study revealed that (a) offending acts were more face-threatening toward a stranger than toward a friend; (b) apology intention was stronger for a stranger than for a friend; (c) for threatening negative face, Americans had stronger apology intentions than did Chinese, whereas for threatening positive face, Chinese had stronger apology intentions than did Americans; (d) situational variations in negative and positive face threats significantly related to apology intentions; and (e) Americans' apology intention, compared with Chinese, was more strongly related to amount of negative face threat in each act.

Two studies examined cultural differences in verbal and nonverbal apology strategies. Self-administered structured survey was employed with a convenience sample composed of undergraduates. U.S. American and Chinese participants were asked to answer questions regarding their choice of verbal and nonverbal apology strategies in a potentially apologetic situation. Study 1, using open-ended questions, and Study 2, using close-ended questions, yielded some different findings. For example, both the U.S. American and Chinese participants did not show significant differences in their apology strategies toward in-group and out-group members in Study 1, but the Chinese showed significant differences in their apology strategies toward in-group and out-group members in Study 2. Overall, the most common apology strategy in the given situation for both cultural groups was a simple apologetic statement. Other findings, implications, and limitations of these studies are discussed.

The current study examined the effects of national culture (U.S., China, and Korea) and interpersonal relationship type (a stranger and a friend) on apology. Findings revealed that participants ( N = 376) from the three cultures differed in their perceptions of the offended person's emotional reaction and their propensities toward apology use (i.e., desire, obligation, and intention to apologize, as well as their perception of normative apology use). Regardless of their cultures, participants showed stronger obligation and intention to apologize to a stranger than to a friend. With regard to the intention to apologize, both American and Korean participants showed a greater discrepancy between themselves and their estimate of most people in their own culture than did Chinese participants. Although participants from the three cultures did not differ in their propensities toward apology use for a friend, both American and Chinese participants showed greater discrepancy than did Korean participants for feeling obliged to apologize to a stranger. For intention to apologize to a stranger, both American and Korean participants, compared to Chinese, showed greater discrepancy between themselves and their estimate of most people in their own culture. Other findings and implications thereof are discussed in more detail in the paper.

Using the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and the Social Norms Approach (Berkowitz, 1997), this exploratory study examined effects of attitudes and norms on intent to become an organ donor for respondents in China and the United States. Norms were measured using four factors –subjective norm, societal descriptive norm, personal injunctive norm, and benevolent indebtedness to family. US respondents scored significantly higher than Chinese on measures of attitude, subjective norm, descriptive norm, injunctive norm, and intent to become a donor, whereas Chinese showed significantly greater agreement with indebtedness. Respondents in both countries had deficient knowledge about organ donation. Finally, results were analyzed through the lens of path modeling which plotted causal relationships predicting intent to become a donor.

The current study examined one's own independent and interdependent self-construals, as well as the estimation of others' independent and interdependent self-construals. Undergraduate students from the United States and China (n = 269) were recruited to test cultural differences in the relative valuation of attributes reflected in self-construal scale items. As hypothesized, Chinese participants perceived themselves as more interdependent than other Chinese, whereas U.S. participants perceived other Americans as more interdependent than themselves. Contrary to the prediction, both Chinese and U.S. participants viewed themselves as more independent than others in their own culture.

The current study examined national culture differences between US American and Chinese participants (N = 317) regarding face need concerns and apology intention, based on positive and negative face needs (Brown & Levinson, 1987) and concerns for self-face and other-face (Ting-Toomey, 2005). Participants read vignettes that varied in relationship types (in-group vs. out-group members) and situation types (negative face vs. positive face threatening) and responded to scales measuring realism of the vignettes, intention to apologize, and five types of face need concerns. The findings showed that Chinese participants, compared to US Americans, had stronger intentions to apologize when their acts threatened the other person's positive face, while US American participants, compared to Chinese, had stronger intentions to apologize when their acts threatened the other's negative face. Other findings and implications thereof are discussed.

This study investigated individual and cultural differences in preferences for direct communication style. Individualism and face needs were examined for variations across individuals and cultures. Multilevel analyses were conducted on data (N = 929) collected in 17 countries. The results showed that individual variations were larger than cultural variations in preferences for direct communication style. Individuals’ self negative face need and other positive face need were positively related to preferences for direct communication style. Each national culture's individualism index score was not directly related to preferences for direct communication style, but instead moderated the relationship between other positive face need and preference for direct communication style. These and other findings and the implications thereof are discussed.