Abstract
We conducted an experiment to examine if there were discrepancies in the inference of intention and consequence of other's interpersonal behavior between native students and foreign students in Japan and if the discrepancies prevented the native and foreign students from a need for interacting with each other, which led to actual interactive behaviors. After 337 native female students and 73 Asian foreign female students at Ochanomizu University read two fictitious episodes describing that the characters of foreign students were interacting with the characters of native students, we asked them to infer the native and foreign characters' intention and consequence of interpersonal behavior. Consequently, we obtained some results indicating a perception gap, that is, the native female subjects regarded the foreign characters' intention and consequence as being more unfriendly and unfortunate respectively than the Asian foreign subjects did, and vise versa for the native characters' intention and consequence. In addition, structural equation modeling based on the data by the native female subjects suggested that such perception affected the amount of the native students' interaction with the Asian foreign students through the native students' need for the interaction.
