Personal and cultural differences in responding to criticism in three countries

The present study investigated whether verbal aggression, argument approach, argument avoidance or assertiveness had any effect on how participants in three countries responded to criticism. Consistent with the first hypothesis, men were significantly more aggressive, assertive, less avoidant, and approached argument more than women. However, men did not respond more assertively to criticism. As predicted in the second hypothesis, US Americans responded more assertively to criticism than did Japanese and Chinese. The third hypothesis predicted that verbal aggression, argument approach, argument avoidance and assertiveness would be associated with a more assertive response to criticism. The data obtained were only partially consistent with the third hypothesis. While only a small number of participants in this study indicated that they would respond to criticism with silence, US Americans used silence to mean anger while for Chinese silence showed personal embarrassment. Very few Japanese selected silence as an option for responding to a neighbor's criticism. The implications of these results are discussed.