This review assesses the literature that focuses on differences in argument between East Asia and the West. It provides comprehensive updated information about the differences, identifying specific gaps between the claims of philosophical literature and the findings from empirical research. By doing so, the present review aims at drawing an accurate picture of how people in East Asia perceive and approach argument, as contrasted with those in the West. First, I start with a selective review of philosophical literature related to the key traditional value of communication in East Asian cultures (i.e., harmony) by contrasting it to that in Western cultures (i.e., personal agency). Second, I explain how the differences in the key values are related to the framework of Hall’s high- and low-context communication, which is relevant in examining differences in argument between East Asian and Western cultures. Next, I corroborate the review of the philosophical literature with empirical research on differences in (a) argument-related cognitions, which include reasoning and argumentativeness and (b) argument characteristics, which include forms, styles, and strategies. Overall, empirical research provided mostly consistent support for selected claims of philosophical literature on the differences in argument between East Asia and the West: perceptions of argumentativeness, inductive versus deductive forms, and succinct versus elaborate styles. In contrast, empirical research provided less consistent or insufficient support for other claims: intuitive/dialectic versus analytic/non-dialectic reasoning, nonlinear versus linear forms, and affective versus rational appeals as strategies. Finally, I pointed out issues that need to be addressed in future research. To conclude, the findings provide valuable information to help us gain a more precise understanding of the differences between East Asia and the West.

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Addressing sexual harassment and assault in the United States has a rather brief history, considering how long these problems have existed. Efforts to include men in awareness and solutions have an even shorter history of only about thirty years. The author has been doing sexual harassment and assault prevention for nearly that entire time, and in this presentation, he cites research, theory, strategy, and experience in doing this work with U.S. colleges, universities, and military. Strategies include vigorous enforcement of laws and policies, supporting survivors, training effective leaders and bystanders, and enlisting men as allies.

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Gender and racial depictions in television commercials provide insight into a society’s views of minorities. Gender inequality in contemporary Japanese society is a major social concern and more research is required to combat it. Advertising provides one avenue to observe what society considers to be normal, as well as ideal, regarding gender representation and roles. Further, internationalization in Japan is generally accepted as a fact, yet there are few measures of the extent of it. The examination of Japanese television commercials can be one such measure, since the depiction of race in advertising reflects, as well as contributes to, societal opinion. Accordingly, this content analysis of two samples of Japanese prime time television commercials (recorded sixteen years apart) examines gender and racial representations in TV advertising in Japan. The main character from each of 231 prime-time television commercials recorded in 2002, and from 242 recorded in 2018, was identified by two coders of different race and gender. These main characters were then categorized by gender and race, each category’s total was tallied and converted into percentages for comparison, and Chi-squared calculations were performed to check significance. Results from both the 2002 and the 2018 samples indicate accurate quantitative representation of society, based on population percentages, regarding Males and Females. However, analyses of both samples reveal an over-representation of Non-Asians compared to Japanese residency statistics. Amongst the Non-Asians, White actors appeared more frequently than Black actors. Comparing the results of the two analyses, the over-representation of Non-Asians was more significant in the commercials recorded in 2002. However, results from 2018 revealed that foreign actors, and White actors in particular, were still over-represented 16 years on. Such findings contribute to the expanding literature on minority representation in Japanese television commercials.

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