Arguments, Conflicts, and Decisions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 119

The study was subsequently replicated with a population of 201 Romanian
respondents, using the same multi-item scales but employing a different manipula-
tion of the situational variable. In this new study (Cionea et al. 2011 ), both the topic
(private vs. public) and the relationship with the counterpart (friend vs. romantic
partner) were manipulated. The basic findings were largely consistent with those
reported by Hample and colleagues: perceived likelihood of success and contextual
appropriateness were still the main predictors of the intention to argue, and again
personal variables (i.e., argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness) did not affect
either the decision to argue or the assessment of costs and benefits relative to that
decision.
Replicating this study with Romanian respondents also aimed to address the
role of cultural differences in argument engagement. In this respect, it was more
interesting to look at significant discrepancies, rather than similarities, with the
data on US respondents collected by Hample and colleagues. Two interesting
results emerged: first, the perceived reasonability of the counterpart is important for
Romanians in deciding whether to enter the argument or not, whereas US Americans
do not seem to care at all for that factor; second, Romanians in general appear to
be more argumentative than US Americans, even if both populations have similar
scores in verbal aggressiveness. The latter finding is especially intriguing, since it
contradicts the hypothesis that people from collectivistic cultures (such as Romania
is usually considered an instance of) are less argumentative than people from
individualistic cultures (of which the United States is the often cited stereotype;
seePruntyetal. 1991 for an example of this type of interpretation).
Overall, these preliminary experimental investigations of argument engagement
provide partial support to the theoretical model outlined by Paglieri ( 2009 ) and
demonstrate that a decision-making approach to argumentation is fruitful. The
very fact that the decision to engage in argument is better predicted by strategic
considerations, such as likelihood of winning and contextual appropriateness, rather
than personality traits, such as argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness, is
an important finding. That this remains true even across cultures, and even if
these cultures sharply differ in terms of argumentative habits, speaks for the
potential generality of these results and invites further attempts to probe engagement
decisions in argumentation, both theoretically and experimentally.
Of particular significance for the aims of this paper is the key role played
by expectations of success and perceived contextual appropriateness: arguing is
considered worth pursuing only if (1) the subject sees it as conducive of a solution to
the original disagreement, (2) in favor of the subject's own position, and only if (3)
the social setting is considered suitable for conducting an argumentative exchange.
All these factors highlight how conflict considerations shape our argumentative
practices: (1) and (2) demonstrate that people tend to argue only if they think this
will reduce, rather than escalate, their differences of opinions, possibly to one's
own advantage; on the other hand, (3) indicates a sensitivity to context which is also
conflict related, since certain situations may be less conducive of agreeable solutions
than others (e.g., public arguments may lead to entrenched positions due to fear of
reputation losses) and also increase the likelihood of generating additional conflicts