The purpose of this study was to examine citizens’ cognition regarding judicial participation using the 3 evaluations included in the factor relation model (Hirose, 1994) and the relationships between the subjects’ cognition and their intention to participate in the judicial system. The 3 evaluations included in the factor relation model are “the feasibility evaluation”, which examines citizens’ knowledge and experience; “the cost evaluation”, which concerns responsibility; and “the benefit evaluation”, which focuses on the effects of citizens’ judicial participation. In the preliminary study, 74 undergraduates freely described their thoughts about judicial participation. Their descriptions were classified using the 3 evaluations mentioned above. In the main study, 206 individuals—mainly undergraduates—were surveyed. Factor analysis revealed that “the feasibility evaluation” and “the benefit evaluation” consisted of 4 factors, and “the cost evaluation” only included one factor. Furthermore, “improvement of affinity” and “improvement of transparency”, which were examined in “the benefit evaluation”, facilitated motivation, but “lack of knowledge and experience”, which was evaluated in “the feasibility evaluation”, and “weight of responsibility”, which was assessed in “the cost evaluation”, inhibited motivation. Based on these results, the directions that future studies should take werediscussed.

This study examined whether participating in a voice-training program called Sports Voice (SVP) promoted elderly men’s psychological well-being and communication with their wives. Three waves (before, immediately after, and three months after the SVP) of a panel dyad survey were conducted with elderly men who participated in the SVP and their spouses. The participants were compared with a control group who did not take part in the SVP. An analysis of covariance revealed that compared with the control group, the experimental group had higher self-esteem, psychological well-being, reflected self-appraisal, and spousal appraisal scores regarding their communication attitude. Moreover, path analysis indicated that participating in the SVP enhanced group identity, which in turn raised the participants’ self-esteem and psychological well-being. Although these effects had disappeared by the time of the survey’s third wave, the men with stronger group identities showed improved well-being and quality of communication than those with weaker group identities. These findings suggest that the SVP promoted elderly men’s psychological well-being by enhancing their group identity within relatively a short period of time.

This study investigated how unspoken narratives contribute to disaster survivors’ mental recovery. It was based on disaster survivors’ responses to the return of their tsunami-damaged photographs; i.e., we examined situations in which they did not or could not speak about a photograph’s content. Although previous studies have addressed disaster survivors’ narratives, few have attempted to analyze “unspoken narratives”. We consider that there are two kinds of experience, ‘type-A experiences’, which are describable (can be explained or narrated), and ‘type-B experiences’, which are indescribable. This study attempted to address three questions: How can outsiders share type-B experiences? How does the dynamism of type-B experiences change over time? How do type-B experiences relate to recovery from the losses caused by a tsunami? Our discovery of and subsequent study of such unspoken survivor narratives was based on over three years of fieldwork in Noda village, Iwate Prefecture, which experienced fatalities and severe damage in the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Our fieldwork included the recovery, restoration, and return of survivors’ photographs, as a means of aiding the post-disaster recovery of individuals and the community. In ethnographies based on our fieldwork, we described ways in which survivors can use tsunami-damaged photographs to share indescribable memories with outsiders. In addition, we analyzed how such memories can change over time. It was proposed that the unspoken narratives consisted of indescribable memories of the survivors’ everyday lives, which could be shared with the other participants of group gatherings through the damaged photographs. We concluded that revealing unspoken narratives could facilitate the construction of new communities as part of the recovery process after disasters.

The present study examined the effect of an expectation of future intergroup interactions on the degree of collective guilt caused by a transgression by in-group members toward an out-group. Drawing on evidence that a need to maintain interpersonal relations with a victim induces a feeling of personal guilt, we hypothesized that collective guilt might have a similar effect at the intergroup level. We also examined whether an expectation of future intergroup interactions moderates the effect of in-group identification on collective guilt. Sixty Japanese undergraduates participated in a study involving an intergroup game paradigm with a 2×2 factorial design. All participants were led to experience collective guilt due to a transgression by in-group members toward the out-group. The extent of group identification was manipulated by enhancing or lowering in-group fairness. Furthermore, half of the participants were told that they would have to cooperate with the out-group in the subsequent task. As predicted, the participants who strongly identified with their group felt greater collective guilt, particularly when they expected that intergroup cooperation would subsequently be required.

Previous studies have indicated that routine work reduces work motivation. However, there has been no focus on the psychological processes that reduce motivation in routine work. This study aimed to investigate the psychological processes by which employee motivation is reduced in routine work. A total of 261 office workers from 9 corporations and a university responded to a questionnaire, which asked the participants about the extent of any routine work they performed, the perceived meaningfulness of their job (other-, self-, or reward-oriented), and work motivation. The results suggested that engaging in routine work reduces work motivation. This relationship was mediated by individuals perceiving their contributions to be less meaningful to customers (other-oriented), as well as in terms of self-growth and work accomplishment (self-oriented). However, social and financial rewards (reward-oriented) were not involved in this relationship. These findings indicate that when managing routine work merely giving high rewards is not sufficient. People’s perceptions of both other- and self-oriented job meaningfulness also play an important role in work motivation for routine work.

Pluralistic ignorance has been suggested to contribute to the perpetuation of social norms, sometimes even when the norms are unpopular and have already lost the support of the majority of group members. Previous studies have suggested that false enforcement could reinforce the perpetuation of unpopular norms by suppressing the number of deviants; however, little is known about the underlying psychological mechanism responsible for this. In the current study, we tested the hypothesis that impression management motivation induces false enforcement, and the perpetually low rates of men taking paternity leave in Japan was addressed as a topic. The results demonstrated that misperceiving others’ beliefs activates impression management motivation. Consequently, norm enforcement toward deviants can be induced even when people do not approve of the norm. This confirms the validity of the impression management strategy hypothesis, which states that people tend to enforce perceived norms based on self-presentational motivation rather than their willingness to persist with the unpopular norms in situations of pluralistic ignorance.

Recognizing the structure of human well-being related to ecosystem services is an important first step to addressing the associated environmental issues. This paper aims to analyze the structure of human well-being related to ecosystem services in Japan (including coastal and inland areas). Satisfaction levels with the five components of human well-being (basic material for a good life, health, good social relations, security, and freedom of choice and action), as defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, were investigated using a questionnaire. Of the five components, structural equation modeling analysis indicated that “security” and “basic materials for a good life” functioned as explanatory variables, while “freedom of choice and action” acted as a dependent variable through its effects on the intermediate variables “health” and “good social relations”. This study obtained similar findings to previous studies regarding the structure of human well-being. The present results also indicate that the structural model of human well-being related to ecosystem services might be psychologically shared among people.