The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of politeness on verbal aggression in the different cultural contexts of Japan and China. Questionnaire research was administered to 195 Japanese university students and 255 Chinese university students. In the questionnaire, students were asked to recall an incident within a week or two in which they got angry. They were also asked to indicate (1) the intensity of their anger, (2) the hostility of the other party, (3) the degree of emotional regulation, (4) the action taken, (5) rational behavioral tendency, (6) social distance between self and the other party, (7) relative power of the other party, and (8) ranking of imposition. Participants\u27 behavior in (4) was categorized into verbal aggression and other. Logistic regression analysis was conducted on the data from both countries, with verbal aggression and other categorized from (4) as the objective variables and the remaining variables from (1) through (8), excluding (4), as explanatory variables. The results showed that proximity to the other party increased verbal aggression for both Japanese and Chinese participants. Emotional variables – anger and emotion regulation-affected verbal aggression only among Chinese students
