Gire (1997) studied the preferred methods of resolving conflicts, comparing people in individualistic versus collectivistic cultures. Participants were 90 Nigerians (Nigeria was considered an example of a relatively collectivist society) and 95 Canadians (Canada was considered an example of a relatively individualistic society). All participants answered questions about how much they preferred each of five methods of resolving conflicts. Half the participants in each country answered the questions regarding an interpersonal conflict (a conflict between two neighbors) and half regarding an intergroup conflict (between two groups of neighbors). This created a two-way factorial design: the two independent variables were culture (Nigeria versus Canada) and the type of conflict interaction (interpersonal versus intergroup). The five dependent variables were five measures of conflict resolution preferences.
These data were analyzed by using the multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) procedure. The 2-way MANOVA yielded a significant main effect of culture F(5, 173) = 6.37, p < .001. An examination of the univariate analyses and the means suggests that Nigerians preferred negotiation to a greater extent than Canadians, while the reverse was the case on arbitration, as predicted. There was also a significant culture by type of conflict interaction, F(5, 173) = 3.84, p < .002. The univariate analyses and the means, presented in Table [15-11], reveal that significant differences occurred on three procedures- threats, acceptance of the situation, and arbitration.
Explain these results to someone who understands factorial analysis of variance but is not familiar with multivariate analysis of variance.
Table 15-11
Method Preferences as a Function of Culture and Type of Conflict