It has been shown that people tend to view opponents as biased. Recent theoretical studies showed that this tendency occurs due to naïve realism. People tend to be overconfident about their objectivity ─ they believe they see the world as it really is (Naïve realism: Ross & Ward, 1995) ─ hence, they assume that people who have a different view must be biased (Pronin et al., 2004). This study examines the effect of encountering clear demonstrations that personal sensory perceptions are not necessarily accurate on the perception of opponents’ bias in their social judgment through exposure to visual illusions. A total of 87 participants were grouped by whether or not they experienced visual illusions. Participants who experienced visual illusions rated opponents as having fewer biases in their social judgments than participants who did not experience visual illusions. This suggested that a person’s overconfidence in their own perception ─ “I see the world as it really is” ─ might be one of the causes of people’s negative perception of opponents.

Drawing on the literature about approach-avoidance behavior, this study tested whether asymmetries in the ways people interact with their smartphones using flick input (an input method based on swiping a key in a certain direction to produce the desired letter) influence their evaluations of the emotional valence of words. Specifically, a downward flick is regarded as an approach behavior in that the movement of a finger is directed toward the self, while an upward flick is regarded as avoidance behavior in that the movement is directed away from the self. In five studies, the predicted relationship between emotional valence and direction of finger movement on the smartphone was observed for nonwords and existing words. On average, words with more downward flick letters were rated as more positive in valence than words with more upward flick letters (hereafter referred to as the Flick effect). Of note, the Flick effect was not found among people who have never owned a smartphone, suggesting that smartphone use with flick input shapes the meaning of words.

The aim of this study was to investigate why certain youths identify with delinquent groups by examining specific factors that increase identification with them, such as intergroup relationships. Specifically, we hypothesized that the permeability of group boundaries would moderate the effect of group discrimination on identification with a delinquent group. In total, 96 male youths were recruited from four juvenile classification homes. The results revealed that youths who perceived group boundaries with lower compared with higher permeability cognitively identified with delinquent groups more strongly when perceiving group discrimination from teachers or the police; this finding supported our hypothesis. No other significant interaction effect was observed. Conversely, in terms of affective identification, we found an unexpected interaction between the permeability of group boundaries and group discrimination from peers. Overall, the findings did not support our hypothesis. However, some of the results suggest that delinquent youths may be able to decrease cognitive group identification by having friends outside of the delinquent group, even if they experienced discrimination from conformity groups such as teachers and the police.

This study aimed to reveal the risk factors for a person to perpetrate stalking-like behaviors following the end of a romantic relationship based on personality traits (attachment anxiety and narcissism), the characteristics of a romantic relationship before a breakup, and the emotions and thoughts of a person after a breakup. To develop two scales measuring the characteristics of a romantic relationship before a breakup and the emotions and thoughts of a person after a breakup, a web-based survey of 189 females and 165 males was conducted in Study 1. In Study 2, a national survey was conducted using two-stage stratified sampling; 106 females and 110 males who experienced the end of a romantic relationship during the past five years and did not initiate their most recent breakup were analyzed. The results of a multiple-group analysis revealed that both attachment anxiety and feelings that a partner was his/her “one and only” increased egoistic preoccupations after a breakup, and the egoistic preoccupations predicted the perpetration of stalking-like behaviors in both males and females.

Grapheme-color synesthesia is a condition in which visual letters or characters induce a specific color sensation. It has been suggested that a range of linguistic properties influence synesthetic grapheme-color correspondence, but the influence of graphemic (orthographic) information is not well understood. In this experiment, synesthetes chose up to two synesthetic colors for each Japanese Kanji character. The results showed that characters that could be divided into right and left subcomponents (radicals) were associated with a higher number of synesthetic colors than characters that could not be divided. This tendency was stronger for projectors, who perceive colors visually in external space, than for associators, who perceive colors in their ‘minds eye’. The results of this study suggest that the graphemic information of Kanji characters affects the number of synesthetic colors, especially for projectors.

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).