Certain participants are insincere when responding to questionnaires. Two current approaches for detecting unmotivated or dishonest respondents, the instructional manipulation check (IMC), and the seriousness check, were examined. We also attempted to improve the quality of survey responses by asking respondents to take an oath that they would be serious before they started answering the questionnaire (TO). The respondents in two Web surveys were randomly assigned to one of four versions of the questionnaire. The main results indicated that (a) response quality tended to improve when respondents who did not follow instructions were excluded from the sample; and (b) respondents that who took an oath to answer seriously chose fewer “don’t know” options, straight line responses, and midpoint responses than the control group, suggesting that respondents behaved consistently with their initial commitment. The results indicate that although IMC is superior for improving data quality, techniques for deterring less serious responses including TO were desirable in that they did not reduce the sample size.

The interpersonal-psychological theory of suicide proposes that suicide occurs in the presence of three factors: perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, and acquired capability for suicide. The Interpersonal Needs Questionnaire (INQ) was developed to assess the first two factors, and the Acquired Capability for Suicide Scale (ACSS) was developed for the third. Our study presented here developed and evaluated Japanese versions of the INQ and ACSS, and determined the best ones for Japanese samples. In Study 1, we asked 189 university undergraduates to evaluate each scale’s clarity. In Study 2, 812 undergraduates were asked about the INQ, the ACSS, and validity items, and 225 undergraduates participated in a second survey approximately one-month from the initial survey for test-retest reliability. In Study 3, 104 psychiatric patients completed the INQ and ACSS and were asked about suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt. Content, structural, generalizability, and external validity results showed that each version of the INQ and ACSS demonstrated acceptable validity. Our comprehensive evaluation provides evidence that INQ-10/INQ-15, and ACSS-5/ACSS-FAD can yield reliable data from Japanese-language population samples.

Two scales have been used to assess burnout in Japan: the Japanese Burnout Scale (JBS), which was developed in Japan, and the Japanese version of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-Human Services Survey (MBI-HSS), which was developed in the US. The MBI-HSS is widely used worldwide, while the JBS is generally used in Japan. We conducted a Web survey to clarify the difference between the two scales among three groups of human service professionals (N = 450). Using multiple analytic methods (e.g., correlation, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, commonality regression analyses), we consistently found evidence that the two scales overlapped. Both scales’ structure of emotional exhaustion had high similarity; however, personal accomplishment and depersonalization were not very similar. Furthermore, the JBS was a better fit to the model than the MBI-HSS. These results indicate that the JBS is effective for surveying burnout among Japanese individuals, adding to result from previous studies in Japan; however, the MBI-HSS should be considered for international surveys, highlighting the need for appropriate selection of scales.

The study described here developed a short surrogate index for the children’s socioeconomic status (SES) using house possessions and investigated its validity. In Study 1, 192 pairs of parents and their middle school-aged children participated in a questionnaire survey. Based on the results, three items regarding possessions at home were selected for the short surrogate index out of the 17 items used in the Programme for International Student Assessment. Furthermore, the short surrogate index for the children’s SES was related to family income, parents’ academic background, and hierarchy consciousness. In addition, it was found to have good test-retest reliability, thereby demonstrating its validity. To confirm that the item selection and validity in Study 1 did not involve sampling error, Study 2 investigated the reproducibility of validity with a different sample. One hundred ninetyfive pairs of parents and their middle school-based children responded to the questionnaire, and the results redemonstrated the index’s validity. Studies in different disciplines using the short surrogate index can be conducted because SES can be both the main and confounding variable.

People differ in how sensitive they are to justice or injustice, how easily they ruminate on injustice, and how strongly they feel justice-related emotions such as anger and guilt. This individual difference can be measured by the Justice Sensitivity Inventory (JSI; Schmitt et al., 2010), which is divided into four components: sensitivity to becoming a victim of injustice, sensitivity to observing injustice, sensitivity to passively benefiting from injustice, and sensitivity to actively committing injustice. Each sensitivity has a different effect on various aspects of human behavior (e.g., cooperation) as well as mental and physical health. JSI is available in German, English, Chinese, and many other languages, but not in Japanese. This study (n = 453) aimed to develop a Japanese version of JSI (JSI-J) and a short version of it, examining their reliability and validity. They were confirmed to be reliable and valid, except for some items. An effective usage of JSI-J and its short version will be discussed.

The study presented here investigated whether tentatively organized categorical representations resulting from learning ad hoc category lists produced false memories as well as whether learning a list with themes (category labels) increased the prevalence of false memories. A sample of university students (N = 48) participated in an experiment using the Deese–Roediger–McDermott paradigm, which presented them with word lists consisting of atypical exemplars of ad hoc categories designed to obscure the themes. The participants studied the lists with or without category labels, and then engaged in a recognition test. The lure items for each recognition list were category exemplars that the participants did not learn. The results indicated that false recognition occurred as a result of learning ad hoc category lists and increased when learning a list with category labels. In addition, participants who noticed a theme reported false recognition more frequently than those who did not, even in the condition where labels were not presented. These findings suggest that noticing themes promotes false recognition regardless of the presence of category labels.

This paper reviews past research on bodily consciousness and its neural representations, as well as current research on the body, self, and brain. In the early 20th century bodily consciousness was first conceptualized as body schema and body image. Empirical findings on phenomena such as phantom limbs suggested that body consciousness could be reduced to body representations in the brain. Body schema and body image have firm foundations in related brain areas including somatosensory and motor cortices, although they cannot be completely reduced to neural processes. In addition, the body image can be better categorized into two aspects (body semantics and body topology) that correspond to different streams of neural processing. Finally, we explored the self that emerges through interactions between the sense of body ownership and the sense of agency. The subjective sense of the self could well be the result of the bottom-up integration of multiple body representations.