How do the Japanese and Chinese university students save face?

A new theoretical framework for dignity, honor and face culture (Leung & Cohen, 2011) is receiving increasing attention in the literature. East Asian　culture, like Japan and China are belong face culture. When one’s face is threatened or lost, the person tends to save or restore his or her face to repair damaged reputation. In order to investigate how do the Japanese and Chinese save face, 135 Japanese- and 133 Chinese university students were asked to rate the degree of the feelings (sad, angry, shame, face-losing) in 5 embarrassing situations, the possibility of using 15 facework behaviors, the timing and cost they will take to save face. The major findings of the current study are as follows: (a) both Japanese and Chinese reported preferring “keeping calm” after losing face; (b) Japanese reported using “smiling away” more than Chinese, and Chinese reported using “excusing” and “problem solving” more than Japanese; (c) 3 factors (avoiding facework, defending facework, problem solving facework) were obtained and the overall structure of the Japanese- and Chinese version were similar; while some items were loaded into different factors between Japanese- and Chinese version.(d) compared to the Japanese, much more Chinese reported they will do anything they can to save face.