Fool them before they fool you

Abstract Bulgarian people have a long history and an enduring national identity, significantly defined by their continuing allegiance to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Here we investigate how Bulgarians understand the prospect of interpersonal argument. Our instruments assess Bulgarians’ arguing motivations, their understandings of the practice of arguing face to face, their emotional reactions to interpersonal disagreement, their tolerance of status inequalities in society, and their willingness to argue at work. We have data from 287 Bulgarians (39% male, 61% female), having an average age of 37 years. We uncovered very few differences between men and women. We found older Bulgarians less eager to argue in typical social situations, though they were not hesitant to argue with their superiors at work. They were more polite and cooperative when they did argue. Bulgarians who were most comfortable with status inequities in society were reluctant to argue with their superiors, were noticeably willing to produce ad hominem arguments, and generally had an aggressive impolite profile of arguing orientations. Poland and Ukraine are natural comparisons because of their shared political histories in the last several generations. We also do a comparison with the U.S., as a general standard of comparison because our theories and measures originated in the U.S.