Pursuit of personal goal and maintenance of interpersonal harmony are both important to people whichever culture they belong to. In fact, one will not feel intrapersonal conflict when personal goal and interpersonal harmony do not conflict to each other. However, in some situation when one is forced to choose from personal goal and interpersonal harmony, s/he will experience intrapersonal conflict. Previous studies have shown that pursuit of personal goal reflects the cultural value of Western individualism while maintenance of interpersonal harmony reflects the value of Eastern collectivism. Whether the cultural emphasis on interpersonal harmony will affect the choice of people who grown up in Eastern culture preferring interpersonal harmony to personal goal? In addition, if the choice leads to a bad situation or result, will the regret feeling one experience based on different choice (personal goal vs. interpersonal harmony) differ? To answer these questions, this study adopted scenario experimental method and three variables i.e. personal goal, interpersonal harmony, and bad result were manipulated. Personal goal was divided into 2 levels: personal goal of one’s own benefits vs. personal goal of justice belief; interpersonal harmony was divided into 2 different targets: colleague vs. supervisor; and the bad result leaded by prior choice was also divided into 2 different situations: bad personal goal situation vs. bad interpersonal harmony situation. 337 college participants were randomly assigned to one of the 8 scenario versions. The results of the study showed that participants in Taiwan were more likely to surrender to supervisor especially in the situation of interpersonal harmony. Furthermore, participants rated highest degree of feeling of regret when surrender to their colleague in giving up their personal goal when that led to a bad result. In addition, participants who surrendered to interpersonal harmony were more likely to make a different decision in case there was another chance to re-make the decision. The cultural implications for the results of this study were also discussed in this article.
