Cultural differences in politeness as a function of status relations: Comparing South Korean and British communicators

Moon, C.; Uskul, A.K.; Weick, M.

doi:10.1002/jts5.40

Cultural differences in politeness as a function of status relations: Comparing South Korean and British communicators

Moon, C.; Uskul, A.K.; Weick, M.

Authors

C. Moon

A.K. Uskul

Professor Mario Weick mario.weick@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Although politeness is an important concern in communications across cultures, a prevalent assumption in psychology is that East Asians are more inclined to be polite than members of other cultural groups due to prevalent cultural norms. Yet, evidence for this assumption is mixed. The present research examined this issue by considering the role of social hierarchy in interpersonal communications of Korean and British participants (N = 220) using an experimental task that involved writing an email to decline a request made by a junior or a senior person. The results showed that Korean participants’ emails were more polite when addressing a senior colleague compared with a junior colleague in work contexts. In contrast, recipient status did not impact British participants’ politeness. Crucially, cultural differences in politeness only emerged when participants addressed a senior colleague, but not when participants addressed a junior colleague. We discuss the implications of these findings and directions for future research.

Citation

Moon, C., Uskul, A., & Weick, M. (2019). Cultural differences in politeness as a function of status relations: Comparing South Korean and British communicators. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology, 3(3), 137-145. https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.40

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Oct 13, 2018
Online Publication Date	Nov 28, 2018
Publication Date	Jul 31, 2019
Deposit Date	Oct 18, 2018
Publicly Available Date	Nov 28, 2019
Journal	Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology
Publisher	Wiley
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	3
Issue	3
Pages	137-145
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.40

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Copyright Statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Moon, C., Uskul, A. K. & Weick, M. (2019). Cultural differences in politeness as a function of status relations: Comparing South Korean and British communicators. Journal of Theoretical Social Psychology 3(3): 137-145, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/jts5.40. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.