This study focused on restorative justice. We aimed to examine ways in which the willingness of perpetrators of crimes to participate in restorative justice-based dialogue with their victims could be increased. This issue was examined based on perpetrators’ reactions to their crimes (i.e., acceptance of guilt, victim-blaming, and undigested guilt), acceptance of responsibility for repairing the damage they had caused, and expectations of forgiveness from their victim/self/others. We used injury scenarios with high/low severity, and the respondents were asked to assume that they were the perpetrator of the crime in one of the scenarios. The analysis of data from 512 respondents indicated that, regardless of the severity of the crime, accepting one’s own guilt and the specific responsibilities (e.g., an apology) owed to the victim increased the respondents’ willingness to participate in dialogue with their victims. In addition, the results showed that expecting forgiveness from the victim increased the respondents’ willingness to participate in dialogue. These results provide suggestions for practice.

We investigated the psychological effects of a continuous gaze from a conversation partner using an application developed by NVIDIA, which was designed to maintain artificial eye contact. We focused on a phenomenon known as the transparency illusion, in which individuals perceive being subjected to excessive scrutiny from their conversation partners. We aimed to explore whether the transparency illusion is influenced by factors such as the conversation partner’s natural eyes and an artificial gaze. We recruited 57 participants. During the experiment, the participants engaged in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Subsequently, they were asked to express whether they believed they had won or lost the game. The game was played under three distinct conditions: video-off, video-on without artificial gaze, and video-on with artificial gaze. As a result, we could not conclude whether the presence of a gaze or the use of an artificial gaze enhanced the illusion of transparency.

This study attempted to use a new method to experimentally manipulate personal relative deprivation to examine its effect on the discourse of self-responsibility of the unemployed. An online experiment involving young full-time workers aged 18 to 34 was performed. The participants first completed a creativity task and were later given a task to distribute additional rewards, where they were informed of their high scores. They were randomly assigned to either the relative deprivation condition, where they were told their reward had been reduced due to budget constraints, or the control condition, where they were told everyone received the same reward. The analyses showed that the participants in the relative deprivation condition were more dissatisfied with their reward and the associated procedure than those in the control condition; however, no significant effect on the participants’ views regarding the self-responsibility of the unemployed was found. The study discussed the significance of the methodology and potential improvements to it as well as the causal relationship between personal relative deprivation and the discourse of self-responsibility.

Crime prevention and punitiveness are major issues in Japanese society and have been thoroughly discussed in academia. However, the relationship between crime prevention and punitiveness, specifically how the presentation of information about crime prevention by public authorities influences punitiveness, has not been investigated. In this study, 975 Japanese adults were presented with information (in a flyer-like form) emphasizing the importance of engaging in private crime-prevention activities. The results showed that: (a) the presentation of consciousness-raising information about crime prevention increased punitiveness, and (b) this relationship was mediated by society-level fear of crime. Based on these findings, we discussed the need for public agencies responsible for crime control to be aware of this potential effect when providing information to the public.