Face-Negotiation Theory

An example of Face-Negotiation Theory is when my roommate and I had a dispute about how much he owed for the utility bills last month. He felt that because he had paid for groceries more than everyone else did that he didn’t have to pay what he promised to pay when it came to the bills. We used two totally different conflict management strategies, he tried the dominating approach and I was trying to come up with a compromise. As soon as I brought up the topic he started yelling and swearing and I just sat there asking him to calm down and talk about it. It didn’t matter what I said he wasn’t going to calm down but we got the problem worked out eventually. Julian was acting exactly how I expect a person from a very individualistic culture to act, whereas I feel like I was trying to help everyone and not just myself. He was trying to restore face and I was trying to give face, had he done what I asked he would have saved face, but instead his face saving method caused him to lose face even more.