Cultural Variations in the Reasons People Provide Avoidance Support

This study explores variations in the reasons people engage in avoidance as a support strategy across the two cultures of the United States and China. An avoidance-support belief scale was developed. Exploratory factor analysis of responses from 231 Americans and 219 Chinese identified three dimensions of the scale: (1) protecting the support seeker from harm by avoiding, (2) maintaining a positive mood by avoiding, and (3) spiritual/philosophical reasons for avoiding. Follow-up analyses revealed that Chinese scored significantly and substantially higher than Americans for all three avoidance support dimensions. Implications and future research directions are discussed.