Ch. 12 Culture and Self-Construals

According to the book compliance behavior is strongly affected by personality differences and by culture and culturally defined self-construals. There are many cultural differences in compliance behaviors. For example Japanese people use a wider range of tactics than Americans and are more likely to use positive tactics such as promise, positive expertise, and positive esteem. Japanese people try to avoid conflict while Americans almost rely on and expect a confrontation of ideas, reasons, and arguments. Last semester in my Comm 173 intercultural global communication I wrote a paper on Asian international study students who came to America for school. My research found that many Asian students who studied in Asia as children were taught to be quiet in class and to never question their teacher. However when Asian students came to America for school many of them had difficulties with their professors. American Professors expect students to participate in class and ask questions and challenge their ideas and often many Asian students felt uncomfortable challenging and questing teachers.