Cultural Assessment
The Intercultural Conflict Style (ICS) inventory seeks to explain intercultural communication style along two dimensions. One is direct/indirect and the other is emotional expressiveness/emotional restraint. The theory is that the items in the questionnaire are mutually exclusive, such that one can evenly distribute the points. That was not my experience, but that is the working theory. The results of my quiz showed a score of 16 along the indirect/direct line, which is said to indicate a tendency towards indirectness. That's an interesting finding. Along the emotional expressiveness/restraint axis, I scored a 30, indicating a tendency towards emotional expressiveness. That makes more sense. This puts me in the dynamic style of conflict resolution.
Hammer (2005) notes that the dynamic style is oriented towards indirect strategies. Traits include hyperbole, associative arguments, ambiguity, repetition and use of third party intermediaries. These are not good traits for debate,...
I would have put myself in the direct category, and in that would have landed in the engagement style, which is more direct and confrontational in nature, but with emotions.
I do not find this interpretation to be accurate. There are methodological flaws. Choosing between responses that are not mutually exclusive lends to strange results, where I could reasonably choose strongly in favor of both questions. Moreover, I find it nonsensical that Hammer feels that choosing an emotional approach gives a "0" to directness. What is indirect about emotion? The entire structure of the inventory is based on the idea that directness and emotion lay on different axes, but the pair response methodology has us choosing one at the expense of the other. This means something that is a 5 on emotion is a 0 on directness. This leads to the conclusion of indirectness. Yet it does so on a premise that runs directly counter to the premise on which…
