Friendship communication in Japan and the United States: Cultural and individual level analyses

It has become extremely important to study intercultural friendship because of the rapidly changing demographics with a greater chance of forming intercultural friendship, not only in the United States but also elsewhere in the world. Past research reported some difficulty forming intercultural friendship among international students, including Japanese studying in the United States. It suggests that the major contributors to the difficulty were the cultural differences in the concepts and expectations of friendship that influence communication behavior. Therefore, this dissertation explores differences and similarities in friendship communication in Japan and the United States.; In addition, when studying cultural differences in communication, recent research has put focus on the individual level of culture or self-construals. These self-construals are assumed to be more accurate and valid than ethnic or cultural background in explaining and predicting different communication behaviors across cultures. This dissertation further investigates whether self-construals can explain individuals' communicative behavior and what roles self-construals are playing in communication processes, specifically between close friends. Eleven sets of hypotheses were proposed, tested, and analyzed concerning Japanese and U.S. American friendships in terms of desirable attributes, self-disclosure, feelings of closeness, and friendship rules in relation to the cultural dimensions and self-construals. A questionnaire was administered to a total of 239 college students (157 in U.S., and 82 in Japan). The results demonstrated that there were significant cultural differences in the intensity of close feelings toward friends, breadth and depth of self-disclosure, and endorsement of friendship rules whereas both U.S. Americans and Japanese reported closeness toward their lovers and friends in a similar manner. On the other hand, the results on self-construals of cultural dimensions did not indicate their associations with individuals' behavior, or with the cultural dimensions, and no evidence was found on the self-construals' mediating role of culture and individuals' behavior. The implications of the findings and limitations of the study are discussed, and ideas for the future research are offered.