17/03/2008

Konflik dan Budaya

In cross-cultural psychology, the most popular and widely analyzed dimension of

cultural values is individualism and collectivism (e.g., Hofstede, 2000; Kim, Triandis,
Kagitcibasi, Choi, & Yoon, 1994).

Individualistic cultures are defined by detachment from relationships and community.

The individual views himself or herself as relatively independent from others.

In contrast, collectivist cultures stress the importance of relationships, roles and

status within the social system.

Cross-cultural comparisons showed that people in individualistic cultures prefer

active, assertive and confrontational strategies for resolving conflicts (Ohbuchi,
Fukushima, & Tedeschi, 1999), have more confidence in their personal decisions
(Mann, Radford, Burnett, Ford, Bond, Leung, Nakamura, Vaughan, & Yang, 1998)
and might, therefore, be more decisive and risky than people in collectivist cultures in
their decisions.

People with collectivist values pay much more attention to the social aspects of
problems (Triandis, 1994) and search especially context information in uncertain and
complex situations (Strohschneider & G ﾁ ss, 1999). They are sensitive to social
consequences of their actions and follow a more defensive-incremental strategy
(G ﾁ ss, Strohschneider, & Halcour, 2000). They value security, are more risk-
avoiding and follow passive, collaborative and avoiding strategies (Ohbuchi et al.,
1999).

Collectivism places emphasis on the group to which individuals belong.

Under collectivism, one is identified not as an independent person but as a member

of a group, one's honor is for the glory of the group and one's fault brings shame to
the group, collective goals and interests override those of each individual member to
the extent that one is often asked to sacrifice one's own interest for the sake of the
group and conform to the collective effort.
Particularly in the Confucian tradition the family and kinship groups were the central
locus of this collective orientation. Familism, therefore, is the most typical collective
orientation in very Confucian society. Hence comes the phenomenon of what is
called in this society 'collective egoism' or 'collective self-centeredness.'

This orientation breeds the tendency of factionalism, ethnocentric closed-

mindedness toward outsiders or xenophobia, exclusive nationalism, and a variety of
group-centered inclinations to get embroiled in conflict with other such groupings

FINDINGS

While Avoiding is seen as unproductive as a general approach to managing

disputes,it is much more common in East Asian cultures than Western cultures.

Ohbuchi and Takahashi (1994), who define avoiding as “refusing both overt
recognition of a conflict and engagement in any active action toward its resolution”
(p.1347), found in their study of
American and Japanese students that Japanese use an avoiding strategy 48% of the
time, while Americans use this strategy 22% of the time.

Bond and Hwang (1986) report similar patterns among Chinese:

Chinese strategies for resolving these conflicts...are characterized by strategies
geared to short-circuit open conflict – the use of indirect language, middlemen, face-
saving,a long-range view, flexibility, and so on. Strategies such as open debate,
which
require direct confrontation, are avoided.

Morris et al (1998) find that Chinese are more likely to avoid than Americans, while
Americans are more likely to use a competitive or dominating strategy than Chinese,
which reproduces a similar finding by Trubinsky, Ting-Toomey, and Lin (1991).

The overall pattern seems to be clear. The question is: Why does this difference
occur?

The answer provided by Ohbuchi and Takahashi (1994) is that Japanese are more
concerned than Americans to maintain a positive relationship with others. Despite
the fact that Japanese in their study thought that engaging with others about
problems would be more
productive than avoiding, doing so was also seen as very risky–relationships may be
damaged, and social harmony disrupted.

For a collectivist culture (Triandis, 1995), they argue, maintaining social harmony and
relationships is paramount.

Furthermore, in cultures with more interdependent self-identities (Markus &

Kitayama, 1991), others’ reactions matter more than one’s own desires.

A similar point is made by Bong and Hwang (1986), who argue that, for Chinese, the
most important factor is social order and interpersonal harmony.
Underlying both the Japanese and Chinese cultures is a Confucian sense of the
value of social order and collective (rather than individual) well-being.

Morris et al (1998), take a slightly different approach, arguing that it is not

collectivism that makes the difference, but conformity. It is not that Chinese tend to
care more about others, but that they conform more to others. Morris et al were not
able to disconfirm the possibility that collectivism played a role in Chinese-American
differences, but they were able to show that social conservatism
accounted for the greater degree of avoiding among Chinese compared to
Americans.