Cross-Currents In The Room-A Qualitative Cross-Cultural Study Of Roommate Conflict Of Chinese And American Women Students

Despite prolific interpersonal conflict studies, roommate conflict is a topic seldom touched upon by scholars. By interviewing 25 Chinese and 11 American women students, this thesis explores and compares the dynamics of roommate conflict in the two cultural groups and identifies cultural, situational, relational, and gender reasons behind the shared or differing conflict behaviors.This thesis first traces different approaches to conflict management studies, and then introduces the two research questions and the grounded theory research method. In the main part, the thesis first defines roommateship. Despite"I"vs."we"cultural differences, data analysis reveals two shared paradoxes of the roommateship: openness vs. forcedness; distance vs. closeness. The research then reveals three main categories of roommate conflict: substantive issues, identity-based issues and relational issues. Nine most commonly employed conflict styles are identified in the two cultural groups: talking, silence, accommodating, soothing, patronizing, integrating, third party help, confronting and withdrawal. Soothing and patronizing are found in Chinese informants only in this research. Because of different cultural orientations, American women students tend to talk out their concerns with their conflictual roommate to solve conflicts, whereas Chinese women students are less talk oriented. Chinese women students use silence, accommodating and third party help more than American women students, whereas American women students opt more for withdrawal, exit from the roommateship in particular.The research reveals that the two cultural groups have more shared experiences and feelings than dissimilarities. Common relational constraints being part of the reason, gender factor and the multi-ethnic American sample also mitigate and dilute potential cultural divergences.