The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of nationality and gender in the American and Japanese student athletes' leadership preference such as training and instruction, democratic behavior, autocratic behavior, social support behavior, and positive feedback behavior. One hundred sixty seven NCAA Division III American male and female student athletes, and 152 Japanese male and female student athletes athletes (n = 49 American male, n 118 American female, and n = 90 Japanese male, n = 62 Japanese female) were selected for this study from the roster of athletic teams in the academic year 2005-2006. The data collection was conducted by the Leadership Scale for Sport (LSS) using the inQsit 0 online survery system for American and paper based questionnaire for Japanese. A 2 (nationality) x 2 (gender) ANOVA was computed (p < .05) for each leader behavior to examine the effects of nationality and gender in preferences of leadership behavior.Research findings revealed that there were statistically significant effects of the interaction across gender and nationality for social support behavior. Additionally, there were statistically significant differences between American male student athletes and American female student athletes in their preference of social support behavior. Meanwhile, there were statistically significant effects of nationality for training and instruction, autocratic, and positive feedback behaviors.