Chinese People's Self-Construal and Its Relationship with Conflict Management Styles

This research examined the structure of self-construal of Chinese people and further detected the relationship between Chinese people's self-construal and their conflict management styles. Study 1 suggested that there were six types of self-construal in Chinese people, which could co-exist in one person. Study 2 demonstrated that Chinese people's self-construal could better predict their conflict management styles, which included eight styles: integrating style, compromising style, dominating style, obliging style, avoiding style, emotional expressing style, third party help, and neglect style. From the perspective of Ting-Toomey's face-negotiation theory, the present study's theoretical significance and the future research direction were discussed.