https://phys.org/news/2018-11-peers-student-attitudes-deviance-japan.html

Our analyses of comparable survey data from college students in Japan (n=591) and the U.S. (n=625) generated largely supportive, but somewhat mixed, evidence for the predicted similarities and differences. In both countries, peer reactions to deviance more strongly predicted student attitudes toward deviance than did peer deviance. Moreover, peer deviance strongly predicted student deviance, while student attitudes mediated the effects of peer reactions on student deviance in both countries. Contrary to the hypotheses, peer reactions and peer deviance did not more strongly predict student attitudes in Japan than in the U.S. Additionally, peer deviance more strongly predicted student deviance in the U.S. than in Japan. In agreement with the expectations, the relation between student attitudes and student deviance was stronger in the U.S. than in Japan.

The great value of this study is that the comparable data, collected in highly similar settings in Japan and the U.S., enabled determination of the extent to which the theoretical explanations and causal relationships are generalizable across these two considerably different countries. Our results suggest that future research on the cross-cultural generalizability of American theories of deviance, whether cross-sectional or longitudinal, would benefit not only from using the same methodology that we used in this study, but also from connecting the internal-external dimension in Tittle and Paternoster's classification of theories of deviance to cultural variability in individualism-collectivism.

                                                            
                                    
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