The present study examined the mere exposure effect of olfaction, focusing on the relationship between participants' liking for and impression of odorants. Thirty-two college students were exposed to either jasmine essence (Jasmine Group) or rose essence (Rose Group) consistently for 4 successive nights for the entirety of the sleep period. Participants' liking for and impression of both stimuli were evaluated 3 times: before the first exposure, after 2 nights of exposure and after 4 nights of exposure. A significant increase in liking was observed only in the Jasmine Group, in which participants reported low liking at the first evaluation; no effect was seen in the Rose Group, in which participants reported high liking at the first evaluation. As for the impression of the odorants, repeated exposure to rose decreased subjective intensity, and repeated exposure to both jasmine and rose decreased subjective stress. Correlation and multiple-regression analysis revealed that the decrease in subjective stress contributed significantly to the increase in liking. These findings are consistent with the conditioning hypothesis for the mere exposure effect by Zajonc (2001); however, this may be a result of the idiosyncratic properties of olfactory sensation.

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This article reviews studies investigating the effects of manipulating odor-information on perceived intensity, focusing on methodology of how to control odor presentation and to set experimental design. Recent findings suggest that the methodology regarding the odor presentation and experimental design is important to detect significant effects of manipulating odor-information, especially on perceived intensity. Perceived intensity rapidly changes depending on odor adaptation and habituation process. Thus it is critical to minimize the effects of adaptation and habituation to detect the cognitive effects on perceived intensity. It has been found that a short-duration, intermittent odor presentation method with between-subject design where participants experience only a single (positive/negative) condition is one of the best experimental procedures so far. The method avoids stagnation of odor stimuli around peripheral receptors within a nostril, letting participants keep relatively higher sensitivity to the odor till the end of the experiment session. The between-subject design also seems necessary to prevent the participants from undergoing two(positive and negative) conditions, avoiding habituation (learning) to the odor. Effects of manipulating odor-information on other experimental dependent variables such as pleasantness and odor qualities are also briefly introduced.

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How can people imagine colors from smelling odors? We assumed that when people can name an odor correctly, they can imagine an appropriate color of the odor source through semantic imagery. The participants smelled 20 everyday odors and for each one chose imagined color from a hue-circle of 24 colors. They also named odors whenever they could. Only 8 odors could be associated with each color-category, and many of the 8 were named easily. However, people also could imagine colors from odors, whether the odors could be named or not. From this we can suggest that people would associate an odor with some inner semantic representations, even if they can't name the odor, then they could imagine colors in accordance with the representations.

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In our everyday lives, we are exposed to many stressors that induce mental stress, and consequently people may suffer mental illness, such as depression, bipolar mood disorders, and so on. Although there are many empirical studies showing that smelling an aroma or eating/drinking something is useful for easing mental stress, those studies did not use standardized methods for evaluating stress and/ or for easing stress. Preceding studies also used simple and boring tasks, such as the Kraepelin test requiring mental subtraction of a number sequence. In this study, a convenient task using SUDOKU puzzles for evoking mental stresses was introduced. Then, effective methods for easing stresses were investigated. This study revealed that the aromas of coffee and orange had a suppressive effect on stress, but the aromas of grapefruit and hinoki did not suppress mental stress. Also drinking canned coffee, bottled water, cola drink, or eating chocolate did not have a suppressive effect on mental stress. This study suggests that using coffee or orange aroma as an ambient odor suppresses mental stress.

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The study of eating in psychology takes place primarily at the physiological level, and research themes generally view eating as a biological behavior, controlled by biologically-based motives. This paper emphasizes the role of mental processes involved in the starting and stopping of eating, as well as the importance of affective processes in eating behaviors. Cognitive eating controls found in dieters who eagerly desire to reduce their body weight are case in point; their eating behavior is difficult to explain without considering mental processes. However difficulties in predicting how emotions affect eating linger, as previous research examining the relationship between emotions and eating often suggest contradictory and confounding results. A five-way model proposed by Macht (2008) shows promise as a good tool to analyze these differing viewpoints, and develop hypotheses to investigate the relationship between emotions and eating.

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The aims of this study were to see whether the most frequently experienced food craving of Japanese males was for rice, and to investigate the relationship between mood and food cravings, especially for rice. Undergraduate students completed a questionnaire of several measures, including gauging food craving frequency, the Japanese version of DEBQ, and the Japanese version of POMS. The highest item on the mean scores of craving frequency was rice, for both males and females. For both males and females, correlation analysis showed no significant correlation between mood and craving frequency for rice. For females, there was significantly positive correlation between negative mood and craving frequency for foods other than rice. However, for males, there was significantly positive correlation between positive mood and craving frequency for foods other than rice. These findings suggested the possibility that rice craving may be characteristic of Japanese people and indicated food cravings are associated with mood, though in different ways for females and males.

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While facial expressions of basic emotions are universal, such expressions are also influenced by display rules that control expressive behaviors across various situations. The present study examined the effects of context and gender on facial expressions of emotions. A total of 289 college students in Okinawa prefecture (143 men and 146 women) participated in this study and answered a questionnaire on the facial expressions of emotions in four conditions of social contexts. These situations were as follows: being alone, interacting with a close friend and feeling emotions toward the friend, interacting with a close friend and feeling emotions toward an event or someone other than the friend, and public situations. The results indicated that basic emotions could be classified into three categories based on patterns of expression across four situations: happiness and surprise, anger, fear, and disgust, and finally, sadness. It was also found that women generally expressed emotions more than men did, while women expressed less anger and disgust toward their close friends than men did. These results are further discussed from the viewpoint of the effects of emotional expression on interpersonal relationships and gender stereotypes regarding emotional expressions.

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The present study investigated the association between individual differences in executive attention and the suppression of behavior and thought by measuring Effortful Control (EC). A negative association between EC and the commission of errors in the Go/No-go task, and thought intrusion in the thought suppression task were found, which indicated that the lower EC score an individual has, the worse performance he showed in each task. A low performance in the Go/No-go task suggested that an individual with a low EC would show hyperactivity in the anterior cingulate gyrus, and malfunction in the orbitofrontal cortex. Additionally, the result in the thought suppression task in this study revealed that measuring EC could predict the frequency of thought intrusion.

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This article examines the role of pictograms in text-messaging. Past research has shown that using emoticons in casual e-mail messages facilitates friendly impressions, while using emoticons in more formal and polite messages hinders sincere impressions of the sender. To examine how pictograms in text-messaging affects impressions of the sender, one-hundred and five female students were presented with different text-messages varying in pictogram use and message formality, and were subsequently asked to rate the impressions of each sender on multiple dimensions. The results showed a significant main effect of pictogram use as well as an interaction effect of pictograms and message formality. Use of pictograms generally facilitated favorable and friendly impressions towards the sender. However, whereas lack of pictograms leads to less sincere impressions for casual messages, pictograms did not affect sincerity for formal messages. The important role of pictograms in conveying emotional information in text-messaging is discussed.

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The purpose of this study was to develop a procedure of depressive mood induction that operates the degree of the arousing mood by changing an instruction on situation image method. In study 1, 276 undergraduate students were asked to image 8 situations, and to rate degrees of depressed, anxiety, and positive mood in each situation. In the result, betrayal situation (a high depressive rousing situation) was selected as the situation that undergraduate students would arouse a depressive mood. In study 2, for operating the degree of the mood, instruction about the relationship, time and reason on the betrayal situation were changed. This 3 situations, betrayal situation (a high depressive rousing situation), and neutral situation were also rated depressive, anxiety, positive mood by 194 undergraduate students. In the result, the situation that changing a reason could only operate depressive mood, and maintain anxiety mood. As a result, this study found that arousing mood could be operated by changing the instruction of the situation on mood induction procedure. In the future, this mood induction procedure would contribute to the field of emotional investigation.

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