Yan Bing Zhang

Social Interactions Across Media Interpersonal Communication on the Internet, Telephone and Face-to-Face

Two studies compared college students’ interpersonal interaction online, face-to-face, and on the telephone. A communication diary assessed the relative amount of social interactions college students conducted online compared to face-to-face conversation and telephone calls. Results indicated that while the internet was integrated into college students’ social lives, face-to-face communication remained the dominant mode of interaction. Participants reported using the internet as often as the telephone. A survey compared reported use of the internet within local and long distance social circles to the use of other media within those circles, and examined participants’ most recent significant social interactions conducted across media in terms of purposes, contexts, and quality. Internet interaction was perceived as high in quality, but slightly lower than other media. Results were compared to previous conceptualizations of the roles of internet in one’s social life.

The Portrayal of Older Adults in Advertising: A Cross-National Review

From a multinational perspective, this article provides an overview of a number of research programs examining portrayals of older adults in advertising. The research described includes both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the place of older people in advertising and the ways this is associated with older adults’ place in society. This article is organized around three central themes: an overview of the major theoretical perspectives surrounding advertising and aging; an overview of research conducted in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, China, and India; and a final critique.

Relational quality and media use in interpersonal relationships

This study examines the relationship between relational quality and media use in relationships. In addition, the impacts of other potentially important variables such as the sex and relationship type of the participants and their partners are explored. College student participants focused on interaction experiences with an acquaintance, friend, romantic partner or family member. The results indicated that participant sex and partner sex did not affect reported media use, whereas relationship type had significant effects on the extent to which face-to-face and telephone communication were used. Relationships with acquaintances had the lowest relational quality and romantic relationships, while closer, were less satisfying than either family or friendship relationships. Same-sex relationships were perceived as more satisfying than cross-sex relationships. Finally, media use did not predict relational closeness or satisfaction.

Perceptions of Conflict Management Styles in Chinese Intergenerational Dyads

We examined intergenerational communication and conflict management styles in China. Older and younger Chinese adults were randomly assigned to evaluate one of four conversation transcripts in which an older worker criticizes a young co-worker. The young workers communication was varied across the transcripts to reflect four conflict management styles: competing, avoiding, accommodating, and problem-solving. As expected, older participants favored the accommodating style over the problem-solving style. Young adults either preferred the problem-solving style to the accommodating style, as predicted, or judged the two styles as equally positive. The results illustrate the juxtaposition of tradition and modernization/globalization in the changing Chinese cultural context, and demonstrate how such cultural changes are reflected in interpersonal communication between the generations.

Japanese College Students’ Media Exposure to Sexually Explicit Materials, Perceptions of Women, and Sexually Permissive Attitudes

The present study examined Japanese college students’ ( N  = 476) use of sexually explicit material (SEM) and associations with perceptions of women as sex objects and sexually permissive attitudes. Results indicate that Japanese college students used print media most frequently as a source for SEM followed by the Internet and the television/video/DVD. Male participants used SEM significantly more than females. In addition, sexual preoccupancy mediated the relationship between exposure to SEM and perceptions of women as sex objects, whereas exposure to SEM in mass media had a direct association with Japanese participants’ sexually permissive attitudes.

Accommodation and institutional talk: communicative dimensions of police-civilian interactions

Communication accommodation theory (CAT) has been described as one of the most prominent theories in communication in general (see Littlejohn & Foss, 2005; Tomsha & Hernandez, 2007) as well as in the social psychology of language in particular (Tracy & Haspel, 2004), and has currency in several disciplines (see Meyerhoff, 1998). Indeed, from its initial roots in accent, speech style, and bilingual modifications (see Sachdev & Giles, 2004), CAT has expanded into being an ‘interdisciplinary model of relational and identity processes in communicative interaction’ (Coupland & Jaworski, 1997, pp.241–242). Research has applied the theory (e.g., Coupland & Giles, 1988; Williams, Gallois & Pittam, 1999) in a wide variety of nations, cultures and languages; to study communication between different social groups (cultures, genders, generations and abilities); in different social and institutional contexts (in organizations, in the health care system, the courtroom, or simply the streets); and through different media (face-to-face interactions, but also radio, telephone, email, etc.). Although the majority of work has been conducted from neo-positivistic and experimental frameworks to enhance control of the variables being investigated, the methodologies and disciplines invoked have, nonetheless, been impressively broad (see Giles, 1984; Giles, Coupland & Coupland, 1991).

Husbands' Conflict Styles in Chinese Mother/Daughter-In-Law Conflicts: Daughters-in-Law's Perspectives

This study examined Chinese daughters-in-laws (N = 287) perceptions of the husbands conflict management styles in their dyadic interaction regarding mother/daughter-in-law conflicts and associations with marital satisfaction and relational satisfaction with the mother-in-law. Results showed that the problem-solving style was perceived to be used most by the husband, followed by the accommodating, avoiding, and competing styles. In addition, the problem-solving and accommodating styles were positively associated, whereas the competing and avoiding styles were negatively associated with judgments of communication appropriateness and effectiveness, and the relational satisfaction variables. Furthermore, results indicated a moderator effect of shared family identity on the associations between perceptions of the husbands conflict management styles and relational satisfaction with the mother-in-law. Implications of the findings were discussed with reference to the prior literature on interpersonal conflict management, the Common Ingroup Identity Model, family relationships, as well as culture change in China.

Conflict-Initiating Factors in Intergenerational Relationships

This study examined American young adults’ written accounts of intergenerational communication with a focus on factors that initiate conflict. Analysis of the conflict scenarios in intergenerational relationships revealed seven types of initiating factors. Results also indicated that the type of relationship with older adults was associated with the frequency distribution of five of the seven initiating factors. Specifically, young adults perceived they were criticized and rebuffed by nonfamily elders more frequently than by family elders, whereas young people tended to disagree with and rebuff family elders more than nonfamily elders. Furthermore, young people reported more incidents of illegitimate demand from family elders than from nonfamily elders. Results are discussed with respect to intergenerational communication research and the communication predicament of aging model.

Conflict Management Styles: The Role of Ethnic Identity and Self-Construal among Young Male Arabs and Americans

This cross-cultural study compared young male Arabs’ and young male Americans’ perceptions of their ethnic identity, self-construal, and conflict management styles. Findings indicated that Arabs had stronger ethnic identity than Americans. Arabs were both more independent and interdependent than American participants. Conflict style comparisons demonstrated that Americans chose the emotional expression, dominating, and neglect styles more than Arabs, and Arabs chose the integrating, third-party help, and avoiding styles more than Americans. Participants did not differ in their preference of the compromising and obliging conflict management styles. In terms of the relationships among ethnic identity, self-construal, and conflict styles, little difference was found between the two cultural groups. The integrating, compromising, avoiding, and neglect conflict management styles were predicted by both independent and interdependent self construal for both cultural groups. The obliging and third-party conflict styles were positively predicted by interdependent self-construal. The dominating style was predicted by independent self-construal and ethnic identity. The only conflict style that was predicted differently among Arab and American participants was the emotional expression style. Among American participants, interdependent self-construal and ethnic identity predicted emotional expression style. For Arabs, independent self-construal predicted the emotional expression style.

English Proficiency, Identity, Anxiety, and Intergroup Attitudes: US Americans’ Perceptions of Chinese

Abstract Guided by the Common Ingroup Identity Model and Berry’s acculturation framework, this study examined the roles that perceptions of language proficiency, cultural identity, and communication anxiety had on intergroup attitudes and stereotypes in the American–Chinese contact context. Serial mediation analyses with 10,000 bootstrap samples revealed that perceived English proficiency of a Chinese contact had significant indirect effects on affective and behavioral attitudes toward Chinese through American participants’ perceptions of their contact’s host and home culture identification and communication anxiety. Perceived English proficiency had an indirect effect only on positive stereotypes through the Chinese contact’s perceived identification with home culture.