E-mail Print PDF

High-Context and Low-Context Cultures

How Does this Effect Choice of Conflict Styles?

In a cultural setting known as individualist, also sometimes referred to as “low context”, the context in which conflict takes place is often not so important.  Here individuals feel free to make decisions according to their own preferences without much consideration of the larger context.  Anyone can express their personal preferences to others with little regard to age, status, roles, or customs.   If this sounds like your life, Instructions A will probably give the greatest insight for you into your conflict styles.

On the other hand, if you live or work in a setting known as collectivist (or “high context”), chances are that you have a clear sense that expressing personal preferences is appropriate only in certain circumstances.   Here, duty, obligation, and expectations of others  signal or decide many things in human interaction.  This includes who can speak out in conflict and with how much volume.   Thus,  for people accustomed to collectivist patterns of behavior, specific information about the context  - who, about what, where - must be known before answering questions about “what to do” in conflict. If this sounds like your life, Instructions B will work better for you, since they guide you to select one specific conflict or kind of relationship and hold it in mind as you take the inventory.

Many people operate in mixed settings, so either instruction set could work. Welcome to the complexities of modern living! You can learn more about the differences between the two modes below, as well as the cultures/regions of the world often associated with each.  If you remain undecided, you cannot go wrong with Instructions B. They work for everyone, regardless of background, so long as you remember that the picture of yourself they yield at the end cannot be generalized to other situations.

Individualist or Low Context Culture

People from individualist/low context cultures (like mainstream North America, western and northern Europe, and their derivatives) assume freedom to make choices with little reference to roles, customs, group expectations, or others in the surroundings. They are concerned with: What do I want? What does my opponent want? What should I do now? Individuals in dispute think, “I am in a conflict” and respond accordingly.

Collectivist or High Context Culture

People from collectivist/high context cultural backgrounds (like Southern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Middle East, Africa, and aboriginal cultures) are more likely to think “we have a conflict”, a reference to their personal social network which may or may not include the opponent. Every response has to be considered in light of implications for others such as family, friends, colleagues.

This larger context offers both constraints and resources in the form of social networks, customs, values, intermediaries, lines of influence, and expectations. In this environment, many things influence whether people are free to express a wish or viewpoint to others and if so, how strongly.  Key influencing factors include: age, gender, and status; roles, connections, duty, and obligation to uphold customs.

In collectivist settings, there are powerful expectations for all about what is proper conduct, regardless to personal preferences or conflict styles. No matter what your personal style preference is, for example,  your opinion is less likely to be challenged if you are from the oldest family in such a community, or are an elder in your tribe or the PhD with the most published books in your university. And from the other side of this conflict, you are unlikely to feel free to assert yourself with such a person if your status is near the bottom in such a group.   Although roles influence conflict styles to some extent in individualist cultures, they do so far more in collectivist cultures.

Many People Prefer One but Have Some Experience with Both

Modern people have at least some experience with both modes, irrespective of where we live. In airports and commercial centers in big cities anywhere in the world, many people operate in individualist/low context mode. Who they are, their past, their social status are often neither known nor expected to be known in such settings. People do their business, say what they need, and pass on.   In cultures that are largely collectivist, we could call these examples pockets of individualist behavor in collectivist environments.

Similarly, there are pockets of collectivist behavior in individualist environments. Family gatherings, small religious congregations, cliques of old buddies, neighborhood restaurants with a local clientele are all settings where everyone knows “the rules”, what the pecking order is,  and feels pressure to behave accordingly.

Many people have at least some experience with both individualist and collectivist settings.   But most of us are more comfortable in one setting than the other, and we tend to assume that others function the same way we do. This assumption, of course, is a setup for misunderstanding.

* * * * *

For this inventory, we invite you to choose the instructions that work best for you in answering the questions.   We want the questions to feel appropriate to your reality.   If you don't interact with people from cultural backgrounds different than your own, you can choose the instructions that feel right for you and forget about collectivist vs. individualist cultures.

But most people today relate to others from a variety of cultural backgrounds.   If this is true for you, you will benefit by gaining a sympathetic understanding of how people different than yourself respond to conflict.  You can learn a lot by watching those around you or asking them questions about how they they deal with conflict.   Most people have never taken an inventory like this one and find it a challenge to describe something they've probably never given much thought.  But if you ask questions in the right way, you can learn a lot. Ask questions like:

  • When you have a conflict with someone, what factors do you consider in deciding whether to speak up or not?
  • If you had a conflict in your home community with someone who is 20 years older than you, would you feel free to express your opinion?  Why/Why not?
  • Do you deal with conflict the same way at work as at home?  If they are different, how are they different and why?
  • How did people in your parents' communities deal with differences/conflict when they were younger?
  • How did/do your parents deal with conflict?  What did they teach you is important when you are in a conflict?
  • What would you wish to teach children is important in a conflict?
  • Are you ever surprised by how people from a cultural background different from your own respond to conflict?  What, specifically, surprises you?  How does that differ from the way you were taught to deal with conflict?  What do you like about the way people in your culture deal with conflict?  Is there anything you admire in the way another culture deals with it?

These questions will open conversations that can teach you a great deal about the differences between individualist and collectivist cultures.   And in fact they will take you well beyond that topic if you listen well and reflect deeply.  What people think should be done in response to conflict reflects many of the most pivotal values that human beings hold.   Conversation about conflict very easily becomes a conversation about life and meaning.   It is true that conflict can destroy, but it is also true that conflict - and what we choose to do about it - can bring hope and possibiities for transformation.  Engaging others on this energized terrain is a wonderful way to explore the richness of our humanity.