Face and facework in conflict: a cross-cultural comparison of China, Germany, Japan, and the United States

The purpose of the current study was to investigate face and facework during conflicts across four national cultures: China, Germany, Japan, and the United States. A questionnaire was administered to 768 participants in the 4 national cultures, in their respective languages, to measure 3 face concerns and 11 facework behaviors. The major findings of the current study are as follows: (a) self-construals had the strongest effects on face concerns and facework with independence positively associated with self-face and dominating facework and interdependence positively associated with other- and mutual-face and integrating and avoiding facework; (b) power distance had small, positive effects on all three face concerns and avoiding and dominating facework; (c) individualistic, small-power distance cultures had less other-face concern and avoiding facework, and more dominating facework than collectivistic, large-power distance cultures; (d) Germans had more self- and mutual-face concerns and used defending more than U.S. Americans; (e) Chinese had more self-face concern and involved a third party more than Japanese; and (f) relational closeness and status only had small effects on face concerns and facework behavior.