Japan-U.S.study on self development and socio-cultural context in adolescence

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In this study, we focus to compare three cultural groups-Japanese, Japanese-American and Anglo-American students on self development and socio-cultural context. The questionnaire was designed to collect information about a wide range of topics, including students' and parents' backgrounds, self-competence, memtors, psychological supports from significant persons and students' felling for their parents.1. Perceived self-competence on global self-worth, close friendship and scholastic competence/intellectual ability domains : Japanese middle school students and college students consistently rated their self-competence lower than their cultural counterparts. This tends to be clear in case of middle school students, especially those of females.2. Parents' and friends' positions as mentors : Friends were most important mentor in three cultural groups except Anglo-American females. In the case of Japanese and Japanese-American students, same gender friend showed significantly higher scores than cross gender friend. On the other hand, cross gender friend showed significantly higher scores than same gender friend in Anglo-American students. In the case of Japanese and Anglo-American students, especially females, mother was another important mentor.3. Relation between perceived psychological support from significant person and perceived self-competence : Consistent predictors to each competence domains were not found in each cultural groups. We found, however, that in case of female students psychological support from same gender friend tended to become a significant predictor to the competence domains.