This study proposed an action research plan to help people attain their own subjective, individually initiated disaster risk mitigation strategies, while questioning the research stance of most disaster experts. These experts traditionally rely on scientific methods, expecting subjects to follow instructions provided in a generic manner. Such emphasis on routine instructions may deter the participant from actively engaging in their own risk mitigation. To cope with this problem, action research—a human scientific research approach that emphasizes collaboration between researchers and their subjects—has been implemented. The effectiveness of action research can be demonstrated through the “single-person drill.” During a mock emergency (tsunami simulation) drill, each participant’s movements are recorded, and then overlapped on GIS maps to show whether the participant would have escaped from the predicted movement of a tsunami. This study traced the subjective, individually initiated risk mitigation of three participants, across three stages of the drill, including planning, dissemination, and reflection. We compared the action research approach to traditional scientific approaches, and discovered that action research generates greater participant interest, thus facilitating individual involvement in disaster risk mitigation.


This paper focused on altruistic behaviors of volunteers following two major catastrophes: the Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 and East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Basic simulations using cellular automata were conducted to examine the volunteers. The simulation accounts for the Neighborhood factor (N), which prescribes conformities in near environments, and the Remote factor (R), which prescribes norms through information about the disaster from mass media. During the Hanshin Earthquake, the number of volunteers peaked in the earlier stages, but did not continue due to stronger R factor. On the other hand, the opposite pattern was observed in the East Japan Earthquake, because of a stronger N factor. To elaborate, the total number of volunteers decreased due to the limited accessibility to the geographical location of the affected area. This paper discusses the limitation of this simulation in that it concentrates volunteers to the centralized disaster area, and forwards the importance of increasing the N and R factors in the recovery process.


This study investigated the degree of the shared mental model, or team dialogue effect, on team performance, through the questionnaire method. A total of 236 students from 29 teams engaged in a school festival participated in the study. Results indicated that the effect of team dialogue on objective team performance was dependent on shared mental model. Team dialogue had no effect on objective team performance when mental model had been well shared. On the other hand, team dialogue promoted objective team performance when mental model had been poorly shared. Furthermore, team dialogue was seen to enhance subjective team performance. Our findings suggest that shared mental model is instrumental in achieving implicit coordination.


Recent research has demonstrated that incidental physical experiences influence social perception and behavior. The present research examined how touching either a hard object or soft, i.e. haptic experience, can affect interpersonal perception and self-perception. Based on Harlow’s (1958) classical research along with more recent studies on social warmth and physical warmth, we hypothesized that there are connections between social warmth and soft versus hard haptic experience. Participants were 21 female undergraduates, who evaluated themselves on feminine positive traits, feminine negative traits, masculine positive traits, and masculine negative traits in advance. They were instructed to squeeze either a soft rubber ball or a hard wired ball while completing an interpersonal and self- perception tasks. Participants squeezing the soft rubber ball were more apt to rate a female stranger more favorably, and evaluated her as more positively feminine. These participants were also more likely to change their self-views toward more negatively masculine than those who squeezed the hard wired ball. These results suggested that effects of soft versus hard haptic experience on self-perception differ from interpersonal perception.


Morality influences our judgments of right or wrong in society, and it is in turn influenced by external factors. In this study, we examined the effect of clothing in morality judgment. Based on the fact that morality is often implicated with the colors black and white, we investigated whether black or white clothing influence the wearers’ self-perception of morality. The participants were asked to wear black or white clothing, and then were administered an Implicit Association Test (IAT) measuring his/her implicit morality. In addition, they explicitly rated their own morality. The results showed that participants wearing white were more likely to judge themselves as being more moral in both implicit and explicit terms than those wearing black. We discussed the processes underlying the effects of the color of clothing on self-perception of morality, and the factors that affect this.


When we realize others are superior to us, we may feel two types of envy: malicious and benign. Research suggests that benign envy is related to “catching up” to superior others, whereas malicious envy is connected to “bringing them down” to our own level. In accordance to theories of embodied metaphor, we investigated whether two types of envy would associate with self/other concepts, and vertical motor action. Participants were shown the word “other” placed above the word “self.” They were instructed to either repeatedly shift “self” up to “other” (the self-up condition) or shift “other” down to “self” (the other-down condition). They then read a scenario in which they would lose a contest to their competitor, and were asked to rate benign and malicious envy toward him/her. Two experiments showed that participants in the self-up condition felt more benign envy than malicious envy, and those in the other-down condition exhibited the opposite. Additionally, participants in the self-up condition decreased their self-defensive attribution more than those in the other-down condition did. We discussed the role of metaphor in the two types of envy.


Tilting your head toward the right or left shoulder may indicate that you may be doubtful about something. Eighty-two undergraduates were asked to assume three head positions: (a) right tilt, (b) left tilt, and (c) upright, in counterbalanced order, by looking into a hole at different angles in a box. The results indicated that when tilting to the right, they were likely to judge a socially desirable person to have less commitment toward his/her job (p=.002, d=0. 9). It was also found that men were more willing to take a risk when they tilted their head to the left, than when it was upright (p=.014, d=0. 8). There was no effect on logical thinking. Our hypothesis that head-tilting would trigger more elaborate information processing was supported only when their heads were tilted to the right in an interpersonal situation. We attributed this for people being apt to tilt their heads to the right by nature. Conversely, left-tilting facilitated more careless behaviors, perhaps because it was often an awkward posture. However, the findings were not contradictory overall, if we were to modify our hypothesis so that right-tilting would enhance carefulness. Future research may be needed to consider individual differences in head posture.


This study examined the effects of subjective heaviness and physical weight in the evaluation process. Past studies, have indicated that the abstract concept of importance is related to physical heaviness. For example, when participants were asked to judge the significance of curriculum vitae presented on either a heavy or light clipboard, those presented on heavier clipboards were judged to be more impressive than those presented on lighter clipboards. According to the results, sense of heaviness is thought to activate concepts metaphorically related to heaviness, and this leads to a change in impression. However, previous studies have not distinguished between subjective heaviness and physical weight, hence the purpose of this study was to clarify which of the two can better account for changes in impressions. A psychological experiment using a tasting task was conducted. The results confirmed that subjective heaviness influences evaluations of price and value.