Research Findings: The purpose of this study was to examine differences in the development of conflict management strategies, focusing on 3- and 5-year-olds, through a comparison of 3 neighboring Asian cultures, those of China (n=114), Japan (n=98), and Korea (n=90). The dual concern model of conflict management was adopted to probe which strategy children would prefer to use in 2 hypothetical conflict situations. Results indicated that, first, for disagreement, 3-year-olds in the 3 countries equally preferred the dominating strategy. For competition for resources, 3-year-olds differed in their strategy preference across all cultures. Second, the observed strategy preference of 3- to 5-year-old children in this study was more or less different from that of older schoolchildren, regardless of culture. Practice or Policy: These findings suggest the significance of the context, the complexity of the phenomenon of the development of cultural differences, and the significance of cohort sampling.

How do we assess the value of our lives? What makes the life we live a good or worthy one in our own eyes? What are its aims? The answers to these questions are implicit in the often unarticulated commitments by which people define their selves, purposes, and actions. These commitments structure the moral framework that guides our everyday qualitative distinctions and positions us within a unified narrative of continuity and change. The substantive conception of a good life, we argue, presupposes but is not reducible to a set of basic values. As an initial exploration of cultural variation, Canadian, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese university students were compared on what they held to be most important for assessing the worth of their lives. The results revealed considerable commonality of content with notable differences consistent with the cultural ethos of each group.

日米の大学生を対象とした質問紙調査によって，高親密／低親密関係それぞれにおける対人ストレッサー頻度，それらとソーシャルスキルの関連，およびディストレスへの影響の文化差について検討した。対人ストレッサー頻度に関して，対人葛藤（ケンカや対立）の文化差は示されなかったが，対人過失（迷惑をかけること）と対人摩耗（本音の抑制や気遣い）については文化と親密性の効果が見いだされ，なかでも日本・高親密条件では他の条件と比較して対人過失の頻度が最も高く，一方で対人摩耗は相対的に低かった。対人ストレッサー頻度の文化差に対するソーシャルスキルの影響として，日本のほうがアメリカよりも高親密関係の対人過失頻度が高いという文化差に対するスキルの媒介効果が有意であった。また，高親密関係における対人葛藤頻度とスキルの関連について，アメリカでは高スキルほど対人葛藤頻度が低いという負の関連が示されたが，日本ではそのような関連は示されないという文化の調整効果が見いだされた。対人ストレッサーとディストレスの関連については，高親密関係の対人ストレッサーについて，アメリカより日本の方がディストレスとの関連が強いという文化差が見いだされた。

The present study investigated the influence of interpersonal conflict management styles on language expressions and the differences in expressions in same-sex relational categories based on specific in-group-out-group classifications. Questionnaires were administered to 367 university students in Japan. After reading a scenario, participants reported on actual language use and gave ratings on an interpersonal conflict management scale. The results revealed that Japanese change their expressions, along with psychological styles, depending on the relational target. They also indicated psychological constructs were related to their equivalent expressions. The results suggested that future research should take into consideration the potential differences in behavior and interaction posture inherent in various relational and situational categories.

The present study examines the relationships among situational features, face concerns, and requesting strategies in the light of discourse patterns and speech levels. Japanese participants (N = 428) rated these measures in one of four situations where relational closeness (high and low) and social status (high and equal) were manipulated. The results of the path analysis generally confirmed that the situational model that predicted situational factors influenced face concerns and requesting language use, and face concerns were mediators from situational factors to language use. These results are discussed in the cultural contexts of face theories.

The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of interpersonal category differences based on intimacy and social status (e.g., parents, close friends, acquaintances, and intimate seniors) on five conflict management styles (dominating, integrating, compromising, avoiding, and obliging). Questionnaires were administered to 195 female university students in Japan. A one-way between-subjects multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed to test the influence of interpersonal categories. Generally, it was found that both intimacy levels and social status variations significantly influenced interpersonal conflict management styles. The higher the social status and the lower the intimacy level, the more obliging, and avoiding styles were used. To examine combined patterns of five styles on each category, discriminant analysis was conducted. The first function distinguished between intimate-equal status and acquaintance-higher status groups. Integrating and compromising were positively correlated with intimate-equal status, while obliging and avoiding styles are negatively correlated. The second function distinguished between kinship and non-kinship groups. The latter were negatively correlated with dominating, while avoiding and integrating styles were positively related. These findings revealed that subjects changed their conflict handing styles depending on intimacy, social status, and kinship. Although extant studies posited that Japanese social interactions were more collectivistic or based on the interdependent self than American social interactions, the recent research findings have often contradicted this hypothesis (Gudykunst, Matsumoto, TingToomey, Nishida, Kim, & Heyman, 1996; Matsumoto, Weissman, Preston, Brown, & Kupperbusch, 1997). An extensive review of cross-cultural research claimed that there was an inconsistency in these findings (Matsumoto, 1999; Takano & Osaka, 1999). Even metaanalysis research revealed that the Japanese no longer maintain collectivistic tendencies (Oyserman, Coon, & Kemmelmeier, 2002). Reasons for this anomaly were claimed to be changes in the values of the Japanese (Matsumoto et al., 1997), university student samples (Gudykunst et al., 1996), the lack of cross-cultural equivalence in the instruments (Iwawaki, 1994), and the reference group effect (Heine, Lehman, Peng, & Greenholtz, 2002). This inconsistency could be due to methodological problems rather than the recent trend of the individualistic society in Japan. Many intercultural researchers have claimed that communication patterns in Asian cultures are highly contextualized according to the interpersonal relations and situations (e.g., Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Triandis, 1994, 1995). However, this very feature was not well reflected in the research methods. In the examination