Lower executive attention is expected to be associated with higher social anxiety. However, previous studies have reported inconsistent results. This study examines how the interaction of intrinsic alertness, orienting, and executive attention are associated with social anxiety. A total of 100 participants completed the Attention Network Test and Japanese version of the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale. The results of hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed the three-way interaction effect of intrinsic alertness, orienting, and executive attention on social anxiety. Lower executive attention was associated with higher social anxiety when intrinsic alertness was at a high level and orienting was at a low level. These results indicate that when examining the relationship between executive attention and social anxiety, we need to consider intrinsic alertness and orienting.

According to Yu et al. (2022, Study 2), beneficiaries are less likely to feel grateful toward benefactors who exhibit immoral behavior, indicating that gratitude is morally sensitive. As a preregistered conceptual replication study, the present study aimed to examine which specific immoral attribute of benefactors would weaken beneficiaries’ gratitude. The participants of this study were presented with a vignette, in which the benefactors offered to introduce a doctor to them who could help with their physical problems. Referring to moral foundation theory, we randomly assigned one of six moral traits of benefactors: immoral with respect to care, fairness, loyalty, authority, purity, or morally neutral. Preregistered analyses revealed that beneficiaries felt less grateful toward benefactors who were immoral with respect to loyalty and purity. Furthermore, immorality in those two moral foundations weakened beneficiaries’ other appraisals that were consistent with the findings of the original study, while immoral benefactors with respect to care significantly affected neither these appraisals nor gratitude. Results suggest that one should carefully discern the influence of certain kinds of immorality on gratitude.

People sometimes envy another individual with desirable traits, and even experience positive emotions when observing the person suffering misfortune. Schadenfreude is the social emotion experienced when others are in an unfortunate situation without one’s hand in it. The psychological and neurological mechanisms of schadenfreude have been investigated, but its relationship with the autonomic nervous system response has not. The current study (N＝21 undergraduate students), thus, investigated the relationship between envy, schadenfreude, and heart rate. While self-reported measurements indicated that participants indeed experienced envy and schadenfreude, they were not correlated with heart rate.