Article review
Article review
Introduction
The main purpose of the current research was to investigate if face loss is more harmful to representatives of collectivistic culture than for people of individualistic culture. Also, authors of the study tried to examine if factors of relative power loss and norm violation are culture-general or culture specific regarding their significance for face loss. Authors of the article identify several definition and types of face. For example, there are two types of faces in Chinese culture: morals traits of a person and social image. Also, different authors distinguish negative and positive face; a face of oneself and of other people, competence, fellowship, autonomy face. Face loss can happen during communication and interaction due to the rejection of other people. For example, autonomy, fellowship, competence face can be lost if other people do not endorse individual`s need for fellowship, competence or autonomy. Scientists of individualistic cultures describe face lost as an independent personal phenomenon and are focused on studying individuals who lost or gain face. At the same time, researchers of collectivistic cultures study face loss as an interdependent phenomenon which has high significance for social relationships of an individual.
Participants of the study were 257 first-year students from Hong Kong and the US. Chinese sample included 46 female and 45 male participants (mean age= 18,52) while American sample included 92 women and 71 men (mean age=19,3). It was requested from participants to remember some situation that occurred for the past two years during which a participant has been harmed by another person. After recalling an event, students give answers to some questions about characteristics of their harmful events.
For the study authors created several scales for face loss measurement and tested the reliability and metric equivalence of these scales. These scales included questions about the type of harm, type of relationship, target`s face loss, target`s loss of relative power, perceived norm violation, horizontal-vertical individualism and collectivism.
Results
Results of the study showed that there were no significant differences between American students and Chinese students regarding the type of harm (physical/non-physical) and type of relationship with that person who had harmed a participant in the past. Most of the participants reported that harm in their situation was non-physical.
The study investigated difference regarding the impact of relative power loss on a perception of face loss. The target`s perceived decrease of power loss, as a result demonstrated, is more significant for American individuals than for Chinese people. Authors of the study suggest that this dissimilarity can be explained by that Americans used to be equal in a social relationship while Chinese used to have a hierarchical relationship. That is why representatives of collectivistic culture can tolerate the decrease of relative power in their relationships with others and do not perceive this decrease as face loss.
On the other hand, norm violation, as a study showed, play a more significant impact on the perception of face loss in a Chinese sample. Another studies showed that those people who violate norms have faced loss. However, results of the current study also showed that people who have been harmed by a person who violated norms, also experience face loss.
One of the limitations of the study is that it was a retrospective research, so students` memories about their experience could be distorted. On the other hand, this retrospective study evaluated the real-life experience of individuals, so it is the strength of the research.
Another weakness of the study is low variance accounted for in face loss pointed out that there should be other significant predictors of the face loss. One more limitation of the current study is that it did not consider different types and reasons of face loss.
