The Dynamics of Intimate Intercultural Relationships: The Negotiation of Cultural and Relational Identities on Intercultural Couples’ Conflict Management
| dc.contributor.advisor | Atwell Seate, Anita | en_US |
| dc.contributor.advisor | Khamis, Sahar | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | Chien, Hsin-Yi | en_US |
| dc.contributor.department | Communication | en_US |
| dc.contributor.publisher | Digital Repository at the University of Maryland | en_US |
| dc.contributor.publisher | University of Maryland (College Park, Md.) | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2019-06-20T05:32:15Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2019-06-20T05:32:15Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2019 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Research suggests that intercultural romantic relationships are replete with opportunities for conflict. Intercultural couples not only need to manage relational concerns, they also need to reconcile cultural differences. During this process, interculturally-dating/married individuals often engage in cultural (un)learning. However, the intersection of intercultural communication, acculturation, and conflict communication remains largely untheorized in extant literature. Moreover, extant studies on intercultural couples’ conflict management are mostly conducted with Western samples, with a majority of them studying interracial couples that share the same national culture. To address these gaps, this dissertation employed a mixed methods design to study interculturally-dating/married Taiwanese’s relational conflict experiences. This dissertation project aims to provide a better understanding of how cultural and relational factors might work in tandem to influence intercultural couples’ relational conflict management and relational dynamics, including their relational identity orientations and relationship satisfaction. Study 1 was conducted using qualitative in-depth interviews (N = 20). Results showed that (a) some participants enacted conflict strategies that were inconsistent with their endorsed cultural values and that (b) the so-called (non-)constructive strategies, as categorized in Western conflict literature, did not seem to have uniform influences on relationship satisfaction. These unexpected findings indicated that new approaches are needed to more thoroughly understand intercultural couples’ conflict management. In Study 2, a cross-sectional survey with interculturally-dating/married Taiwanese was conducted to test two working models (N = 412). The first working model proposed that cultural (i.e., self-construals), relational (i.e., concerns for self and the partner), and contextual (i.e., neighborhood compositions) factors, collectively, influenced respondents’ relational identity orientations. It was further hypothesized that relational identity orientations predicted respondents’ actual conflict behaviors, whereas self-construals predicted their preferred conflict styles. The second working model investigated if discrepancies between conflict style preferences and enacted conflict behaviors represented an identity gap, which negatively influenced relationship satisfaction. Results provided partial support for these hypotheses. Although relational identity orientations functioned as better predictors of actual conflict behaviors than self-construals, their effects were in the opposite direction than hypothesized. While personal-enacted identity gap negatively predicted relationship satisfaction, the hypothesized indirect effects from conflict management discrepancies to relationship satisfaction through identity gap were only significant for two out of five conflict types: integrating and avoiding. Taken together, results indicate that a theoretical framework that simultaneously captures cultural, relational, and contextual influences provides better prediction of interculturally-dating/married individuals’ actual conflict behaviors. In addition, this dissertation suggests that inter/cross-cultural conflict research can benefit from a non-Western centric approach to theorizing the effects of conflict tactics. | en_US |
| dc.identifier | https://doi.org/10.13016/g9b2-xcva | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1903/21972 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.subject.pqcontrolled | Communication | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | acculturation | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | conflict management | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | identity gap | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | intercultural communication | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | intercultural romantic relationship | en_US |
| dc.subject.pquncontrolled | relational identity | en_US |
| dc.title | The Dynamics of Intimate Intercultural Relationships: The Negotiation of Cultural and Relational Identities on Intercultural Couples’ Conflict Management | en_US |
| dc.type | Dissertation | en_US |
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