Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China

Malaysia is a nation of 30 million people living in an ethnically and religiously diverse society. Interpersonal arguing, an inherent feature of personal and public experience, seems never to have been previously studied in Malaysia. We did so here and compared results to those obtained in India, Ch...

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Main Author: Waheed, Moniza
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Marsland Press 2019
Online Access:http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/80304/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/80304/1/Interpersonal%20arguing%20in%20Malaysia%20and%20how%20it%20compares%20to%20the%20U.S.%2C%20India%2C%20and%20China.pdf
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author Waheed, Moniza
author_facet Waheed, Moniza
author_sort Waheed, Moniza
building UPM Institutional Repository
collection Online Access
description Malaysia is a nation of 30 million people living in an ethnically and religiously diverse society. Interpersonal arguing, an inherent feature of personal and public experience, seems never to have been previously studied in Malaysia. We did so here and compared results to those obtained in India, China, and the U.S. (where our theories and instruments originated). In Study 1 (N = 230), we found interesting distinctions between Malaysia and the other nations on several measures fundamental to the study of interpersonal arguing. Malaysians had a number of comparatively aggressive impulses, but these were tempered by their higher expectation of civility in arguments and their greater sophistication about the general nature of interpersonal disagreement. Malaysians had positive (not negative) correlations between argument-approach and argument-avoid, and between verbal aggressiveness (prosocial) and verbal aggressiveness (antisocial). Malaysia also produced very few sex differences. In Study 2 (N = 200), we recorded the language of the questionnaires disseminated (English or Bahasa Melayu) and replicated Study 1. Results were largely similar to those from Study 1. We found that age, sex, and the language of the questionnaires did not affect the results. Some unexpected findings for Malaysia showed that there is a discrepancy in the understanding of interpersonal arguing between the countries included in this study and that U.S.-developed theories may not be necessarily applicable in Malaysia, particularly in the case of conflict personalization.
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spelling upm-803042020-10-21T18:07:25Z http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/80304/ Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China Waheed, Moniza Malaysia is a nation of 30 million people living in an ethnically and religiously diverse society. Interpersonal arguing, an inherent feature of personal and public experience, seems never to have been previously studied in Malaysia. We did so here and compared results to those obtained in India, China, and the U.S. (where our theories and instruments originated). In Study 1 (N = 230), we found interesting distinctions between Malaysia and the other nations on several measures fundamental to the study of interpersonal arguing. Malaysians had a number of comparatively aggressive impulses, but these were tempered by their higher expectation of civility in arguments and their greater sophistication about the general nature of interpersonal disagreement. Malaysians had positive (not negative) correlations between argument-approach and argument-avoid, and between verbal aggressiveness (prosocial) and verbal aggressiveness (antisocial). Malaysia also produced very few sex differences. In Study 2 (N = 200), we recorded the language of the questionnaires disseminated (English or Bahasa Melayu) and replicated Study 1. Results were largely similar to those from Study 1. We found that age, sex, and the language of the questionnaires did not affect the results. Some unexpected findings for Malaysia showed that there is a discrepancy in the understanding of interpersonal arguing between the countries included in this study and that U.S.-developed theories may not be necessarily applicable in Malaysia, particularly in the case of conflict personalization. Marsland Press 2019 Article PeerReviewed text en http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/80304/1/Interpersonal%20arguing%20in%20Malaysia%20and%20how%20it%20compares%20to%20the%20U.S.%2C%20India%2C%20and%20China.pdf Waheed, Moniza (2019) Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China. China Media Research, 15 (3). pp. 50-70. ISSN 1556-889X; ESSN: 1932-3476
spellingShingle Waheed, Moniza
Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China
title Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China
title_full Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China
title_fullStr Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China
title_full_unstemmed Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China
title_short Interpersonal arguing in Malaysia and how it compares to the U.S., India, and China
title_sort interpersonal arguing in malaysia and how it compares to the u.s., india, and china
url http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/80304/
http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/80304/1/Interpersonal%20arguing%20in%20Malaysia%20and%20how%20it%20compares%20to%20the%20U.S.%2C%20India%2C%20and%20China.pdf