A Cross-Cultural Examination of Family Communication Patterns, Parent-Child Closeness, and Conflict Styles in the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia

ABSTRACT

The current study was designed to examine the impacts of family communication patterns (FCP), relational closeness, and culture on adult children’s conflict styles with their parents. Participants (N = 594) from the United States, China, and Saudi Arabia completed self-report questionnaires that included questions about their family’s conversation and conformity orientations, relational closeness, and their conflict styles with their parents. The results show that conversation orientation is a positive predictor of collaboration and compromise, conformity orientation is a positive predictor of accommodation and avoidance, and relational closeness is a negative predictor of dominance across cultures. Relational closeness also interacts with conversation orientation to influence dominance. The cross-cultural invariance provides empirical evidence of the universal application of FCP in family conflict communication. More importantly, significant interactions between culture and conformity orientation and closeness show that culture’s influence on family communication is better understood through indirect rather than direct roles.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the editor and the two anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback. We would also like to thank following individuals for their assistance to the translation and data collection: Stephanie Kaczynski, Abdullatif Alanazi, Ping Zhu, Hua Cen, Elizabeth Wehner, Waleed Al Sumaimel, Abdul Alsaeed, Aqeel Abu Abdullah, and Zainab Abu Abdullah.