Out of Sync: How Japanese International Students and American Students Misread Each Other

Authors

Jennifer Sousa, Salve Regina University

Document Type

Article

Abstract

The effects of cultural values and perceptions of cultural values on social support and acculturative stress are examined in this study. Japanese international students and American students completed several instruments to facilitate both the comparison and perception of each other’s cultural values and whether the accuracy of Japanese students’ perception of American students’ values was related to self-reported stress in the Japanese students. There were 11 Japanese international students and 46 American students from Salve Regina University participating in the study. Somewhat surprisingly, Japanese and American participants were shown to have similar individualist cultural values, and the American participants scored significantly higher than the Japanese participants on the collectivist values scale. Additionally, the American students’ perceived that the Japanese students would score higher on the collectivist scale than they actually did, and the Japanese students were found to believe that the American students would score higher than the Japanese participants on the individualism scale. Contrary to initial predictions, cultural values and perception of cultural values of the other group did not correlate with the Japanese international students’ level of adjustment, but the Japanese participants’ perception of American values did correlate slightly with their quality of social support.