In order to determine the applicability of Contextual Family Therapy concepts such as loyalty, trust, and reciprocity to eastern as well as western cultures, Japanese and American college students completed the Relational Ethics Scale (RES), a measure of these contextual constructs. The subjects were 173 undergraduate students; 80 from an introductory psychology course at an American college, and 93 from the American college's sister university in Japan. There were no significant effects for sex, however there were significant effects found for nationality. The results indicate that American college students experience more vertical (familial) and horizontal (peer) loyalty, trust, and reciprocity than do Japanese college students. These results conflict with those presented in literature in which Japanese employees are determined to be more loyal and trustworthy than American workers. This occurrence could be due to errors in instrument translation, differences in values held by adult employees versus college students, and confusion about the definition of the Japanese family, particularly regarding the difference between maternal and paternal Japanese relationships. (Author/BF)