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Running Head: RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 1

What Went Wrong in Our Conversation? A Retrospective Analysis of Intercultural

Communication in Chinese and American Dyads

RETROSPECTIVE ANALYSIS OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION 2

Abstract

We report a study using retrospective analysis to understand American and Chinese

participants’ feelings and reactions on a moment-by-moment basis during an interaction.

Participants talked about a fictional crime story together and then individually watched and

reflected on an audio-video recording of the interaction. We found more problems reported when

participants worked with a Chinese partner than with an American partner. In the communication

process, we found that the culture of the discussion partners affected the level of understanding

and involvement of the participants. The results indicated that problems related to aspects of the

communication process such as understanding or involvement might be caused by the interaction

of the participant with a partner whose cultural orientation conflicted with one’s own.


What Went Wrong in Our Conversation? A Retrospective Analysis of Intercultural

Communication in Chinese and American Dyads

The rising global connectivity in economic, educational, political and other spheres raises

the demand for international collaboration. While the potential benefits of global collaboration

have been recognized in both research and practice (e.g., Kayworth & Leidner, 2000; Maznevski

& Chudoba, 2000; Thill & Leonard-Barton, 1993), a variety of problems have been reported in

culturally heterogeneous global teams both in terms of the task work and in the relational aspects

of teamwork (e.g., Olson & Olson, 2000; Windsor, 2001; Wardell, 1998; Handy, 1995).

One possible cause of these problems in global teams is culture differences in

communication styles, norms, value systems and the like, which can make cross-cultural

communication problematic (e.g. Cramton, 2001; Hinds & Kiesler, 2002). For example, Hall

(1976) has observed that some cultures use a low context communication style, which is direct

and to the point, whereas other cultures use a high context communication style, which is more

indirect and relies heavily on the context of communication. This difference may cause

misunderstandings and negative emotions in intercultural interaction (Hall, 1976).

A number of researchers have used observational and survey techniques to identify the

kinds of problems that arise in intercultural communication (e.g., Ting-Toomey, Oetzel & Yee-

Jung, 2001; Setlock & Fussell, 2010; Gelfand, Nishii, Holcome, Dyer, Ohbuchi & Fukuno,

2001). The results of these studies suggest that cultural groups do differ in their styles of

communication, and that intercultural communication can be problematic. However, the results

can’t pinpoint the specific communicative behaviors that lead to interaction problems. Several

laboratory experiments have been able to identify specific kinds of communication patterns that

are especially problematic (e.g., Li 1999a, 1999b) but because participants’ reactions to the


interaction are obtained after the fact, these studies likewise can’t pinpoint what is going wrong

at the level of the moment-by-moment dynamics of the interaction. The goal of the current study

is to provide a deeper understanding of the kinds of communication problems that arise in

intercultural teams and the impact of these problems on team performance and members’ liking

for one another. To achieve this goal, we use a technique developed in psychology, retrospective

analysis, in which participants in a conversation are asked to reflect on a moment-by-moment

basis on their interaction, with the help of video recordings (Gottman & Levinson, 1985). We

compare same-culture pairs of Americans (low context communicators), same-culture pairs of

Chinese (high context communicators), and intercultural American-Chinese pairs. We examine

how team members of different cultures experienced the process of communication in terms of

understanding the conversation, involvement, interest and negative feelings during the

collaboration process; how these experiences may or may not lead to communication problems

and how they influence the outcomes of collaboration. Theoretically, our study contributes to the

development of theories in intercultural collaboration with better characterization of

communication problems in intercultural interaction. From an application standpoint, the results

of our study could clarify how technology may improve certain aspects of group communication

to reduce problems, thus guiding the design of interventions for intercultural group collaboration.

In the remainder of this introduction, we first provide an overview of prior research on

understanding, involvement, and negative emotions in communication. We then present the

goals of the current study and our specific hypotheses. After that, we describe our experimental

design and measures, and present our results. We conclude with a discussion of how mismatches

in communicative styles can impact intercultural interaction.

Problems in intercultural communication due to cultural differences


Since the 1990s, a number of studies have examined the advantages of global teams, as

well as the challenges in managing them (e.g Ives & Jarvenpaa, 1991; Harasim, 1993; Jarvenpaa

& Ives, 1994; Kristof, Brown, Sims & Smith, 1995). These studies have highlighted cultural

difference as an important challenge to global virtual teams (e.g., Kristof et al., 1995, Jarvenpaa

& Leidner, 1998). Cultural differences may lead to miscommunication and information

distortions (e.g., Kayworth & Leidner, 2002), such as failure to interpret messages from partners.

Even when technological advances are able to help reduce the physical distance, cultural gaps

may make it difficult for distributed work teams to establish common ground (Olson & Olson,

2002). Culturally diverse teams have been claimed to possess the potential to be more successful

in various tasks (Watson, Kumar & Michealson, 1993; Cox & Blake, 1991); however, they often

fail to realize these potentials or take longer time to complete (Watson et al., 1993), due to the

various problems brought about by cultural gaps.

One kind of cultural gap may be brought about by differences in communication styles.

Hall (1976) contrasted cultures that use what he called low vs. high context of communication

styles. Low context cultures such as those of the US and Canada prefer more direct, to-the-point

communication, with little regard for the specific context in which this communication occurs.

In contrast, high context cultures such as those of China, Japan and Korea, prefer a more indirect

style of communication, emphasizing the role of contextual cues, such as gaze, facial expression

and relationships between partners, in the production and interpretation of meaning. Although

not perfectly correlated, high-context communication styles are typical of collectivistic cultures,

whereas low-context styles are typical of individualistic cultures (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey,

1988; Gudykunst, et al., 1996).

Both high and low context communication styles can be effective among groups who


share the same style. However, problems can arise when communicators have different styles

(Cramton, 2001). For example, low context communicators typically expect their conversational

partners to directly express disagreement, but high context communicators tend to express

disagreement indirectly though silence. In this scenario, the low context communicator may

erroneously assume that his or her partner is in agreement. At the same time, a low context,

direct, style of communication may be perceived by high context communicators as

inconsiderate and dominating (Gudykunst, Ting-Toomey & Nishida, 1996).

Team members may also differ in the emphasis they place on completing an assigned

task vs. building rapport (Triandis, 1995; Walls, 1993). Some cultures, such as the U.S, place

priority on getting work done efficiently, with minimal regard to building interpersonal

relationships. Other cultures, such as China, tend to emphasize the need to achieve group

harmony and solidarity (Walls, 1993). Problems can arise in intercultural teams if task orientated

team members focus on what information is conveyed while relationship orientated team

members pay more attention to how that information is conveyed and what this indicates about

the relationship between speaker and addressee(s).

Based on previous research between different cultures such as American and Chinese, we

hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 1A: Americans and Chinese working with a partner from a different culture

will report more problems than when working with a partner from the same culture.

In addition, having to use a second language (typically English) in intercultural

collaboration might create more problems for non-native speakers. Therefore we proposed:

Hypothesis 1B: Chinese working with Chinese will report more problems than Americans

working with Americans.


Problems in intercultural collaboration have been explored under various perspectives. In

this study we are interested in three major aspects of the communication process that may cause

problems: 1) understanding, which is closely related to communication grounding, 2)

involvement and interest, and 3) negative emotions during interactions.

Understanding in communication

Mutual understanding plays an important part in communication as it ensured meanings

are accurately transferred between partners. To achieve mutual understanding, partners in

conversations engage in a process called grounding (Clark & Brennan, 1991). Cultural

differences in the grounding process can lead to mutual misunderstandings in cross-culture

teams. Li (1999a, 1999b) suggested that Chinese people engaged in grounding activities to build

good interpersonal relationships with their partners, whereas Anglo-Canadians engaged in

grounding for the sake of conveying information across to their partners. These differences led to

inefficient grounding, less understanding between partners, and thus more problematic

intercultural communication. Therefore, we hypothesize that:


will report lower level of understanding than when working with a partner from the same

culture.

In addition to grounding, language fluency and the level of comfort in using a second

language to communicate also affects understanding in conversation. Various studies pointed out

that when communicating in cross-culture teams, team members who are not comfortable with

using a second language to communicate found it harder to catch up with the conversation as

well as to make themselves understood (e.g., Kayworth & Leidner, 2000; Setlock & Fussell,

2010). We think that this applies even when two people from the same culture converse, but in a


second language. We thus hypothesize that:

Hypothesis 2B: Chinese working with Chinese will report lower level of understanding

than Americans working with Americans.

Involvement in Conversation

Involvement is an integral part of any social interaction. Cegala, Savage, Brunner &

Conrad (1982) conceptualized interaction involvement as “the extent to which an individual

participate with another in a conversation” (pp. 229). Involvement has been identified to

facilitate affiliation, expression of intimacy, regulation of interaction (Patterson, 1983), improved

cohesion of conversations, and thus, fostering better understanding (Villaume and Cegala, 1988).

Research in intercultural collaboration has often found less involvement in cross-cultural

teams (Chen, 1995; Li, 2001), possibly due to cultural differences in the ways people express and

interpret conversational cues of involvement. For example a forward lean might indicate

involvement for one culture and an attempt to control or dominate for another culture (Patterson,

1982, 1983; Cappella, 1983). Therefore, we hypothesize that:


will report lower level of involvement than when working with a partner from the same culture.

Moreover, based on the conclusion from previous studies that Chinese are more

relationship oriented and prefer high context communication, we expect that Chinese participants

will also try to express a high level of involvement in the conversation. Therefore, we propose

the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3B: Americans working with Americans will report lower level of involvement

than Chinese working with Chinese

Negative Emotions in Communication


Moods and emotions have definite influences on team interaction and performance (e.g.,

Kelly & Barsade, 2001) and effective team communication involves attention to members’

affective states, emotions and feelings (Higgins, McCann, & Fondacaro, 1982; McCann, Higgins

& Fondacaro, 1991). In many intercultural collaboration studies, cross-culture teams report more

negative emotions such as anxiety, tensions (Chen, 1995; Ting-Toomey, 1999), frustrations and

annoyance (Cox and Blake, 1991; Seetharaman, Samarah & Mykytyn, 2004). This finding has

been attributed to several causes, including the fact that people are more attracted and persuaded

by similar others (Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Cramton & Hinds, 2005), anxiety, tension and low

self-esteem (Cegala, 1984), and a lack of common ground (Clark and Carlson, 1981). Therefore,

in the interaction of American and Chinese, we hypothesize that:


will report higher level of negative emotions than when working with a partner from the same

culture.

In addition, lower levels of understanding (H2b) in Chinese pairs using a second

language might lead to more negative emotions. Therefore, we proposed:

Hypothesis 4B: Chinese working with Chinese will report higher level of negative

emotions than Americans working with Americans.

Outcomes of intercultural collaboration

It is still unclear from the literature how the problems regarding the above three aspects

of the communication process may affect the final outcomes of intercultural collaboration. While

Li (1999a and 1999b) found that better grounding led to better performance, Setlock et al. (2004)

and Wang et al. (2009) did not find objective performance differences despite differences in

communication styles. A few studies have suggested that culturally heterogeneous groups will


have worse performance (e.g., Paul, Samarah, Seetharaman & Mykytyn, 2004; Diamant,

Fussell, & Lo, 2008; Li, 1999a, 1999b). We thus propose:


will report lower perceived team performance than when working with a partner from the same

culture.


will achieve lower objective performance than when working with a partner from the same

culture.

Moreover, members’ subjective evaluation of the performance might not correlate with

actual performance as it also involves their evaluation of the overall the experience. We think

that since Chinese pairs tend to be more concerned about maintaining group harmony and

cohesion, they will be less critical than American about their partners and their teams, and thus

report higher opinion of their team performance than American pairs.

Hypothesis 5B: Chinese working with Chinese will report higher perceived performance


At the same time, because of the lower level of understanding hypothesized for pairs

using a second language, we also expect that:

Hypothesis 6B: Chinese working with Chinese will have lower objective performance


The Current Study

The current study tries to pinpoint problems in intercultural communication between

American and Chinese speakers using a retrospective analysis technique adapted from

psychology (Gottman & Levenson, 1985). In this technique, participants review their own


conversation using audio-video recordings as probes. The interaction can be broken down into

small increments of a minute or less, allowing us to identify exactly when in the conversation

problems arose and what was being said and done during that moment.

We chose to examine Chinese and American pairs for two reasons. First, the literature on

cross-culture communication has shown that these two cultures differ greatly on a variety of

cultural dimensions, including individualism – collectivism, high – low context communication

and task - relationship focus (e.g Gudykunst et al., 1996). Second, previous studies often found

communication problems arising in Chinese-American and Chinese-Canadian teams, which were

associated with negative team outcomes (e.g Li, 1999a). Our study therefore aims at explaining

the problems found by these studies.

Method

Design

Same-culture and cross-culture pairs discussed and solved a crime case. Each Chinese or

American participant was paired up randomly with a partner from the same culture or from a

different culture, resulting in three combinations (10 Chinese-Chinese (CC) pairs, 10 American-

American (AA) pairs, 10 American-Chinese (AC) pairs).

Participants

Participants consisted of 60 students (53% undergraduate) studying at a large American

university. Of these, 30 students were native Chinese speakers who had been born in the

People’s Republic of China (83%) or Taiwan (17%), and had spent less than 5 years in the

United States or Canada. The Chinese participants spoke fluent or near-fluent English. The other

30 participants had lived for more than 10 years in the United States or Canada and spoke

English as their native language.


Participants were paired randomly into one of the three culture grouping conditions (AA,

AC, CC); however, to control for age difference we made sure that graduate students were paired

with other graduate students, and undergraduates were paired with other undergraduates.

Materials

Task. The task consisted of discussing a crime story and identifying the culprit of the

crime. The crime story, developed by the first author, involved a break in and a murder attempt

on a victim named Alex. Alex is the leader of a rock band of four people. The other three

members of the band were the three prime suspects, one of whom was the actual culprit.

Two different versions of the crime story were prepared, based on the reports of two

witnesses. Each version contained 10 pieces of information important to solving the case. The

two versions shared common information about the victim, crime location, and attack on the

victim. They also included details complementing each other that needed to be combined to fully

understand what happened, such as the time and location of each of the suspects before and after

the crime. The two versions also contained three contradictory details about the crime: (a) the

time of the attack, (b) the body builds of the culprit and (c) the color of the shirt the culprit was

wearing as they were reported from the different perspectives of the two witnesses. These had to

be resolved through discussion to identify the culprit. The details were presented on a single

sheet of paper (622 words for version A; 644 words for version B).

Memory quiz. A paper and pencil memory quiz was created to test participants’

understanding of the materials prior to discussion with their partner. The quiz consisted of 10

multiple choice questions on the key details of the crime (e.g., time, suspects).


Culprit identification form. An online survey form was used by the pairs to indicate

their responses. The form had one slot for indicating the culprit(s) of the crime, and another box

for entering a short paragraph on the pairs’ reasoning behind their identification of this culprit.

Post task survey. Participants completed an online survey asking about their reactions to

the task and partner, their communication styles, and their basic demographic information. Task-

related questions consisted of four 5-point scales adapted from the NASA TLX workload scale

(Hart & Staveland, 1988) to measure mental effort, temporal effort, overall effort, and frustration

during the task, and two five-point scales to measure participants’ subjective evaluation of their

team and individual performance on the task.

Partner-related questions consisted of four items measuring the participant’s liking of

his/her partner, the partner’s liking of the participant, the participant’s enjoyment and comfort in

working with their partners.

Questions about communicative styles include Triandis’ (1995) individualism and

collectivism scale and a subset of 13 items from Gudykunst et al.’s (1996) high and low context

culture scale, selected from the three factors that have the highest loadings in Gudykunst et al.

(1996) study: ability to infer meaning (IM), interpersonal sensitivity (IS) and use of indirect

communication (I).

Retrospective analysis survey. The online retrospective analysis survey consisted of 7

rating questions and an additional open response question that participants completed after each

1-minute video clip. The first three questions asked each participant to rate on 5-point Likert

scales their level of tension (very tense-very relaxed), annoyance (very annoyed-not annoyed at

all) and interest (not interested at all-very interested) in the conversation. The next two questions

asked participants to rate how much their partners understood them and how much they


understood their partners, respectively (1 = not understanding at all; 7 = very understanding).

The remaining two questions asked the participants to rate how much their partners and they

themselves felt involved with the conversation (1 = not involved at all; 7 = very involved). The

final question asked whether the participant had noticed any problem with their interaction at the

point of time shown in the video clip. If their answer was yes, we asked them to provide details

about what went wrong, and what they would have done to prevent or remedy the problem.

Equipment and Video Processing

Three cameras were used to video tape the pairs’ discussions. A Canon Vixia HF1100

high definition camcorder recorded a holistic view of both participants from 5’ (1.5 m) away.

Two Sony DCR-SX44 handycams (720 x 480 color NTSC video), positioned 4’ (1.2 m) directly

in front of the participants, were used to record the head and upper body of each participant.

The two Sony video streams were fed to the left and right channel of a Q-See QSD9004

digital video recorder to be synchronized and combined into a single split-screen video with two

frames, with a good display frame rate of 120 frames per second and resolution of 704 x480 each

frame (see Figure 1). The left frame of the split-screen video showed the video of the participant

sitting on the left and the right frame shows the video of the participant sitting on the right.

Sound was recorded using two Sony ECM-44B - omni-directional lavalier condenser

microphones, connected to a Shure SCM262 Stereo Channel Mixer. The split-screen video and

sound stream were combined and synchronized by the Q-See DVR to make the videos for the

retrospective phase of the experiment.

Two Dell workstations with Dell Ultrasharp 19 inch monitors (1140 x 900 resolution)

were used to present the video clips during the retrospective analysis. The video was synched by

the Q-See DVR and was played back using the software that accompanied the DVR. The 10-


minute video of the discussion was divided into 10 sequential clips of 1 minute each to be played

one by one in chronological order to both participants.

Procedure

The experiment consisted of two phases: a discussion phase and a retrospective analysis

phase. In the Discussion Phase, each pair was brought into a room, signed consent forms, and

received task instructions. Each participant received one of the two versions of the crime story.

They were given 10 minutes to read the story and learn the details of the crime, after which the

hard copies were taken away and they were given the memory test. The experimenter then

corrected the quiz and left the corrected quiz with the participants for the rest of the experiment.

Each pair then discussed the story face-to-face for 10 minutes. In order to solve the

crime, the pairs needed to gather all the information from both versions of the story, resolve

conflicting details, and identify the culprit. At the end of their interaction, each pair submitted

their conclusion about the culprit and the reasoning behind their decision in the culprit

identification form. Each participant in the pair then separately filled out the post-task survey.

In the Retrospective Analysis Phase, the two participants were seated at separate

computer workstations with a divider in between. They were shown a series of 10 one-minute

video clips of their conversation in Phase 1, using the playback software on the Q-See DVR.

After each clip, participants filled out the retrospective analysis survey. After the last clip, the

participants were debriefed, paid and dismissed.

Measures

Control variables. Three measures were used to establish that participants from America

vs. China differed in terms of cultural background and communication style: individualism,

collectivism, high context communication. We also counted the total number of words used.


Individualism and collectivism. We computed factors for individualism and for

collectivism, by averaging all the items originally belonging to these factors in Triandis (1995).

Cronbach’s alpha for these factors were low, possibly due to our low sample size, so we used the

scale in its original format because it has been widely validated by other investigators.

High context communication. The 13 items we used from Gudykunst et al.’s (1996) high

and low context scale were averaged (after inverting the low context items) to create our measure

of self-reported high context communication style (Cronbach’s alpha = .51; Table 2).

Word count. We counted the number of words used by each participant in the transcripts

of the discussions using TAWC software (Kramer, Fussell & Setlock, 2004).

Dependent variables. Dependent variables are number of problems, levels of

understanding, involvement and negative emotions, subjective outcomes and performance.

Problems. We collected a binary measure for whether or not problems exist every minute

of the 10-minute long interaction.

Understanding. Participant’s ratings, on a 7-point scale, of how much they understood

their partner (self’s understanding) during each minute of their conversation were negatively

skewed, so we recoded the data into three categories (1 to 5 =1, 6=2 and 7=3), roughly

corresponding to problematic understanding, good understanding and excellent understanding.

Involvement. Participant’s ratings, on a 7-point scale, of how much they felt involved in

the conversation (self’s involvement) during each minute of their interaction were likewise

negatively skewed and recoded in the same manner as Understanding into three groups.

Participants indicated, on a 5 point scale, how much interest they felt in the conversation. This

measure was also negatively skewed and recoded into three groups (1 to 3 =1, 4=2 and 5=3).


Negative emotions. Participants’ ratings on a 5 point scale of how tense and how annoyed

they felt in the conversation were negatively skewed and recoded into three categories as above.

Subjective task performance. The two questions measuring participants’ subjective

evaluation of their team performance and their individual performance were highly correlated, r

= .61. These were averaged to create a composite score (Cronbach’s alpha = .75).

Effort on the task. The four items from the NASA TLX workload scale were averaged to

measure effort spent on the task (Cronbach’s alpha = .76).

Objective performance. Pairs’ answers to the crime task consisted of two parts: the name

of the culprit(s) and an explanation for the solution. The answers about the identity of the culprit

were marked 1 for correct answers or 0 for incorrect answers. The explanations were scored in

terms of the presence of three key clues needed to prove the culprit guilty. Two research

assistants, who were blind to the conditions of the experiment, coded for the presence of these

clues in the answers (1 for yes, 0 for no). Each of them graded all the teams (kappa= 95%).

Results

We report the results in three parts: First we describe manipulation checks to establish

that American and Chinese participants did in fact use different communication styles. Then, we

report the results from the retrospective analysis, followed by the performance analyses.

Manipulation check

We conducted two-way Analyses of Variance with participant’s culture (American or

Chinese) and gender as the two factors on three characteristics: individualism, collectivism, and

high context communication style. Gender was included based on prior work suggesting gender

differences in communication styles (e.g., Herring & Martison, 2004).


Individualism and Collectivism. We found no significant difference in individualism

between the two cultures (F[1, 56]<1, n.s) or between men and women (F[1, 56]=1.01, n.s)., as

well as no interaction (F[1, 56]<1, n.s). However, for collectivism, there was a near significant

main effect of culture (F[1, 56]=3.72, p=.06). As anticipated, Chinese participants reported

being more collectivistic than Americans (for Chinese, M = 5.31, SEM= 0.14; for Americans, M

= 5.05, SEM= 0.13). We also found a near significant interaction between culture and gender

(F[1, 56]=3.69, p=.06). American females tended to be more collectivistic than American males

(for American males, M= 4.72, SEM= 0.25; for American females, M= 5.17, SEM= 0.10),

whereas the opposite was true for Chinese (for Chinese males, M= 5.52, SEM= 0.20; for Chinese

females, M= 5.17, SEM= 0.19). However, there was no overall main effect of gender (F[1,

56]<1, n.s).

High context communication. For high context communication style, we found

significant main effects of both culture (F[1,56]=7.18, p<0.01) and gender (F[1,56]=5.46,

p<0.05), and also a significant interaction effect (F[1,56]=10.94, p<0.01). Chinese were found to

prefer high context communication style more than Americans (for Chinese, M = 4.31, SEM=

0.08; for Americans, M = 4.16, SEM= 0.09). Females were found to prefer a more high context

style than males (for males, M = 4.08, SEM= 0.11; for females, M = 4.31, SEM= 0.07).

However, we also found that American females (M= 4.34, SEM= 0.10) preferred high context

style more than American males (M= 3.64, SEM= 0.10). In contrast, Chinese males (M= 4.38,

SEM= 0.13) preferred high context style more than Chinese females (M= 4.26, SEM= 0.19).

Total number of words used. We conducted mixed model Analyses of Variance with

self’s culture, partner’s culture and the interaction of these two as the fixed effects, and pairs,

individual within pairs and time within individual as random effects on the number of words


used by each participant. We did not find any effect of partner’s culture (F[1, 56]<1, n.s) or any

interaction (F[1, 56]<1, n.s). However, we observed a trend (F[1, 56]=2.68, p=0.10) for

Americans to use more words (M=65.68, SEM=3.81) than Chinese (M=56.84, SEM=3.81).

Retrospective analysis of pair interaction

To test Hypotheses 1 to 4, we conducted mixed model Analyses of Variance with self’s

culture, partner’s culture and the interaction of these two as the fixed effects, and pairs,

individual within pairs, and time within individual as random effects. Note that in mixed models,

when tests of fixed effects involve a linear combination of variances at different levels of the

model (e.g., group and individual), it is standard to estimate the degree of freedoms associated

with the denominators by using Satterthwaite’s approximation. Therefore, non-integer degree of

freedoms may occur (see Littell, Milliken, Stroup & Wolfinger, 1996 for details). Because our

hypotheses concern the fixed effects of culture, we present only these fixed effects below.

Problems in Communication. Hypothesis 1A predicted that American and Chinese

participants will report more problems when working with a partner from a different culture than

when working with a partner from the same culture. Hypothesis 1B predicted that Chinese

working with Chinese will report more problems than Americans working with Americans. To

test these hypotheses, we conducted a mixed model analysis of the form outlined above, using

the number of problems reported during the retrospective analysis as our dependent measure. As

shown in Figure 3, H1a was partly supported. Significantly more problems were reported with

Chinese partners than with American partners (for Chinese partners, M= 3.9, SEM= 0.51; for

American partners, M= 1.8, SEM= 0.37; F[1, 51.16]=9.35, p<0.01). However, there were no

effects of self-culture and no interaction (both F < 1, n.s.). H1b was also supported. Chinese

working with Chinese reported more problems than Americans working with Americans.


Understanding. Hypothesis 2A predicted that Americans and Chinese working with a

partner from a different culture will report lower level of understanding than when working with

a partner from the same culture. Hypothesis 2B predicted that Chinese working with Chinese

will report lower level of understanding than Americans working with Americans. These

hypotheses were tested with a mixed model analysis using the level of understanding reported

during the retrospective analysis as the dependent measure. Contrary to H2a, we found no effect

of partner’s culture (F[1, 53.93] = 1.38, n.s) and no interaction (F[1, 27]<1, n.s) on reported

understanding. As Figure 4 shows, contrary to H2b, we found a trend that Chinese reported

higher levels of understanding (M=2.20, SEM=0.12) than Americans (M=1.93, 0.12), regardless

of with whom they were working.

Involvement. Hypothesis 3A predicted that participants working with a partner from a

different culture will report a lower level of involvement than participants working with a partner

from the same culture. Hypothesis 3B predicted that Americans working with American partners

will report lower levels of involvement than Chinese working with Chinese partners. To test

these hypotheses, we conducted mixed model analyses on the level of involvement and interest

reported during the retrospective analysis.

As shown in Figure 5, H3a was partially supported. There were no main effects of self’s

culture (F[1, 55.17]<1, n.s) and partner’s culture (F[1, 55.27]<1, n.s), but there was a trend for an

interaction between self’s and partner’s culture (F[1, 27]=2.76, p=0.10). Americans working

with another American tended to report a higher level of interest (M=2.28, SEM=0.14) than

Americans working with a Chinese partner (M=1.99, SEM=0.18). Similarly, Chinese working

with a Chinese partner tended to report a higher level of interest (M=2.31, SEM=0.14) than

Chinese working with an American partner (M=2.02, SEM=0.18).


No significant effect was found for involvement (for self’s culture, F[1, 55.61] = 2.00,

n.s; for partner’s culture, F[1, 55.61]<1, n.s; for interaction, F[1, 27] <1, n.s).

Negative emotions. Hypothesis 4A predicted that Americans and Chinese working with

partners from a different culture will report higher level of negative emotions than when working

with partners from the same culture. Hypothesis 4B predicted that Chinese working with Chinese

will report higher level of negative emotions than Americans working with Americans. To test

these hypotheses, we conducted mixed model analyses on the level of tension and annoyance

reported during the retrospective analysis. Neither hypothesis was supported (all Fs < 1, n.s.).

Outcome Measures

Subjective Outcomes. Hypothesis 5A predicted that Americans and Chinese working

with a partner from a different culture will report lower perceived team performance than when

working with a partner from the same culture. Hypothesis 5B predicted that Chinese working

with Chinese will report higher perceived performance than Americans working with Americans.

These hypotheses were tested using two-way Analyses of Variance with two factors: self’s

culture and partner’s culture on the perceived pair performance ratings of participants and the

perceived effort spent doing the task.

As shown in Figure 6, H5a was partially supported. There was a trend toward lower

subjective performance evaluation when one worked with a Chinese partner (for Chinese partner,

M= 4.53, SEM= 0.22; for American partners, M= 5.05, SEM= 0.22; F [1, 50.85] =2.62, p=0.11).

There was no main effect of self’s culture (F[1, 50.85]<1, n.s) and no interaction (F[1, 27]<1,

n.s). We also observed a trend toward more effort spent working with a Chinese partner (for

Chinese partners, M= 4.08, SEM= 0.16; for American partners, M= 3.65, SEM= .20; F [1, 55.91]

=2.28, p=0.13). Again there was no main effect of self’s culture (F[1, 55.91]<1, n.s), and no


interaction (F[1, 27]<1, n.s). Contrary to H5b, Chinese working with Chinese had a tendency

towards reporting lower perceived performance than Americans working with Americans.

Performance. Hypothesis 6A predicted that Americans and Chinese working with a

partner from a different culture will achieve lower objective performance than when working

with a partner from the same culture. Hypothesis 6B predicted that Chinese working with

Chinese will have lower objective performance than Americans working with Americans. To test

these hypotheses, we conducted one-way ANOVA with culture combination (AA, AC, CC) as

the factor on the binary rating of the answers given by the pairs and on the total number of clues

given in the explanations. The results did not support either hypothesis. We did not find any

effect of pair combination on the answers’ correctness (F[2]<1, n.s) nor on the total number of

correct clues (F[2]=1.88, n.s).

Discussion

This study aimed at identifying problems that arise in intercultural collaboration by

examining various aspects of the communication process such as understanding, involvement

and negative emotions. First, we hypothesized that more communication problems would be

reported in cross-culture pairs than in same culture pairs. Second, we predicted that these

problems would be associated with lower levels of understanding and involvement and higher

levels of negative emotions in cross-culture pairs compared to same culture pairs. Third, we

proposed that this would lead to lower performance and poorer subjective outcomes in cross-

culture pairs than in same culture pairs.

We found mixed support for these hypotheses. Our first and second set of hypotheses

were partly confirmed. We found main effect of partner’s culture on the number of problems

reported. We also found main effects of self’s and partner’s culture on two aspects of the


communication process: understanding and involvement. Our third set of hypotheses was partly

confirmed. We did not find any significant difference on the performance of pairs. However we

found a trend toward lower subjective outcomes with Chinese partners than with American

partners.

The most intriguing aspect of our findings is the lack of interaction between a

participant’s own culture and his/her partner’s culture on most variables. Americans did report

more collaboration issues working with a partner from a different culture (Chinese). This is

consistent with previous work indicating that differences in communication styles between

Chinese and Western partners can create problems in collaboration (e.g., Li, 1999a, 1999b,

Setlock et al. 2004). The difference between Americans’ low context style and Chinese’s high

context style could have led to differences in collaboration strategies such as how to organize

and share information, how to resolve conflicts, or how to approach the crime case. In addition,

American might find it hard to adapt to a Chinese’s partner usage of English.

Interestingly, we found the opposite for Chinese participants, who reported more

problems working with a Chinese partner. Perhaps having to use a second language to

collaborate on a difficult problem-solving task may hinder the communication between Chinese

partners, who may have very different styles of English use. This may lead to a lower level of

understanding and a higher level of tension. However, we found a trend that Chinese reported

higher level of understanding than Americans. There are a number of different possible

explanations for this effect, including cultural differences in the use of the understanding scale,

or a failure of non-native English speakers to accurately detect when they did not understand a

message.


The level of involvement in same culture (AA or CC) pairs tended to be higher than in

cross culture pairs, consistent with previous research (Chen, 1995; Li, 2001). A variety of factors

may explain this finding. First, when conversing with a person having the same communication

style, participants may find it easier to communicate and thus easier to become engaged in the

conversation. Alternatively, people may simply feel more involved when interacting with people

who are similar to them, across a great many dimensions. Teasing these two explanations apart

can be difficult because similar others are likely to share the same communication style.

Although more problems were reported in collaborations with Chinese partners, we did

not find any difference in objective task performance. One possible explanation is that for a

decision making task like the crime case in our experiment, which had only 10 minutes of

allotted time, pairs might be likely to leave confusions, disagreements and doubts unresolved due

to time pressure (e.g., Edland & Svenson, 1993; Johnson, Payne, & Bettman, 1993; Smith,

Mitchell & Beach, 1982). A longer-term task in which people have to work together over time

might show a performance effect, as misunderstandings are compounded. It is also possible that

the self-reported problems mostly concerned the relational or affective aspects of the

collaboration, rather than task execution.

Limitation and Future Directions

There are several important limitations to the current study. First, we examined dyads,

not larger groups of cross-culture members, which may be more typical of global teamwork. We

also focused only on two out of the many cultures with which people engage in intercultural

teams. Furthermore, our Chinese participants were studying or working in the U.S and clearly

do not represent the larger population of Chinese people with whom Americans might


collaborate. Another limitation is the relatively small number of dyads in each condition, which

reduced the power of some of our analyses.

Our next steps include a more detailed coding of the transcripts to further understand the

dynamics of the dialogues at the time at which participants report a problem. We also plan to

explore how our various measures of the communication process (tension, annoyance, interest,

involvement and understanding) change over time during the interaction. In the longer term, we

plan to use the same retrospective technique to examine how problems arise in intercultural

computer mediated communication. With the findings from these analyses, we hope we can

uncover the mechanism by which the communication process could lead to communication

problems in intercultural collaboration. This in turn will help us characterize these problems at a

deeper level, which hopefully will provide insights into how intercultural collaboration can be

improved.

Conclusion

In this study we explored the problems that arise in intercultural communication. We

used retrospective analysis to examine three aspects of the communication process:

understanding, involvement and negative emotions, in 30 pairs of American and Chinese

participants. We found a main effect of partner’s culture on the number of problems reported, but

we did not find the expected interaction between the participant’s own culture and partner’s

culture. We also found that participants tended to report higher involvement in interactions with

someone who shared their cultural background. Our findings help clarify when problems arise

as a function of one communicator’s own cultural orientation, irrespective of the cultural

composition of the group, and when these problems arise from mismatches in communication

styles.


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Figure 1. Split screen video used for playback during the retrospective analysis phase.

Figure 2. Experimental set up. A: The set up of the discussion table for Phase 1.

B: The workstation of a participant during Phase 2 (retrospective analysis).

A. Phase 1 pair discussion B. Work station in Phase 2


Figure 3. Mean number of problems per clip from the retrospective phase of the

interaction by participant culture and partner culture. Error bars indicate standard errors

of the mean.

Figure 4. Mean level of understanding on a scale of 1 (not understanding at all) to 7 (very

understanding) per clip by participant culture and partner culture. Error bars indicate

standard errors of the mean.


Figure 5. Mean level of interest on a scale of 1 (not interested at all) to 7 (very interested)

per clip by participant culture and partner culture. Error bars indicate standard errors of

the mean.

Figure 6. Mean subjective evaluation of performance on a scale of 1 (low) to 7 (high) by

participant culture and partner culture. Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean.


Table 1

Questions used to evaluate experience in the task with factors loadings from factor

analysis with Varimax rotation

Items Loadings

How comfortable are you in collaborating with your partner? .915

How much did you like your partner? .912

How much did you feel liked by your partner? .874

How much did you enjoy the session? .769


Table 2

Items originally belonging to High and Low Context culture in Gudykunst et al. (1996).

Low context High context

In arguments, I insist on very precise

definitions

I am very good at knowing the feelings other people are

experiencing.

I openly show my disagreement with

others

I listen attentively, even when others are talking in an

uninteresting manner

In interacting with someone I dislike, I keep my true

feelings hidden

I can tell when someone likes me without being told.

I qualify (e. g., use "maybe," "perhaps") my language

when I communicate

When pressed for an opinion, I respond with an

ambiguous answer

I listen very carefully to people when they talk

I use silence to avoid upsetting others when we

communicate

I catch on to what others mean even when they do not

say it directly.

I avoid eye contact when I communicate with others

I avoid clear-cut expressions of feelings when I

communicate with others

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