It is widely accepted that sex offenders frequently deny their offense or minimize their responsibility, and there is controversy regarding how this should be approached in psychological interventions. However, few studies have examined the relationship between denial/minimization and recidivism, and the results are inconsistent across the limited body of research. The purpose of this research was to estimate the prevalence of denial/minimization in sex offenders and examine its relationship with recidivism. We examined 1,484 sex offenders who had been convicted from July 2008 to June 2009 in Japan. The prevalence of both denial and minimization was 16.3% overall. In addition, the relationship between denial/minimization and recidivism was investigated for 753 convicts whose sentences had been suspended. Controlling for possible confounding variables, including empirically known risk factors, logistic regression revealed that denial/minimization did not significantly increase the possibility of both any and sexual recidivism during the 5-year follow-up period. Implications for psychological intervention and future research are discussed.

A field experiment was conducted to examine the factors in threat appeal responsible for maintenance of crime-prevention behavior. At four public bicycle parking lots, 256 riders with variable receiver vulnerability characteristics were encouraged to use an extra bicycle lock. They were randomly presented with one of three threat messages featuring victims of bicycle theft (identifiable victim, statistical victim, or control), followed by either high- or low-efficacy preventative-messages. After extra locks were installed on their bicycles, participants’ use of the lock was observed five times within 28 days after the intervention. A mixed-effect generalized linear model revealed that vulnerability of the participants increased the use of the lock immediately after the intervention. Meanwhile, highly vulnerable participants who were presented with an identifiable victim and high-efficacy messages decreased their use of the lock significantly compared to low-vulnerability participants and those who were presented with the low-efficacy message. The result implies that threat appeal strategies differ depending on receiver vulnerability and the type of preventative behavior.

This study attempts to identify response styles of Japanese students by cross-level and cross-national analyses. Tasaki and Ninomiya (2013) demonstrated the existence of an acquiescence response behavior of Japanese students based on the model by Billet and McClendon(2000), who measured latent response characteristics as “style factor.” In this study, we used a different response style measurement model proposed by Weijters, Schillewaert, & Geuens (2008) positing that response styles are psychological constructs and observed response style variables are summary indicators derived from sets of various, but independent, test items. Results of cross-national analyses indicated that Japanese and Korean participants were more likely to choose a mid-point response (MRS) and less likely to choose an acquiescence response (ARS) than American counterparts, but no significant difference was observed for an extreme response (ERS) among participants from the three nations. Within the Japanese response style model, cross-level analyses showed that ARS scores were significantly higher than ERS scores, indicating that Japanese participants had an acquiescence response style, consistent with the findings from Tasaki & Ninomiya (2013).