ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with a summary of advice and an example of how one student combined the ideas of culture and conflict to analyze a particular historical episode. Interpersonal conflict is therefore inevitable due to the complexity and interdependence of people's everyday lives. Interpersonal conflict is the social experience and expression of differences in values, beliefs, goals, desires, or expectations, and it induces "complex, goal-directed reactions" that lead to costs and benefits for the parties involved. Research on conflict styles is perhaps the most common way of directly approaching the connections between culture and conflict management. Specifically, face negotiation theory predicts people from collectivistic cultures with large power distance tend to express a greater degree of other-face and mutual-face concern, and thus are more likely to use avoidance or conflict styles that respect the other person's goals. A great deal of research, mainly cross-cultural, has attempted to connect cultural orientations to preferred conflict styles.
