This study examined the presence of pluralistic ignorance about diversity beliefs and its relationship with relational conflict, using group-level survey data. We hypothesized that employees would misperceive their colleagues’ diversity beliefs and estimate them as less positive than their personal beliefs, and that this would cause conflict in the workplace. We surveyed 514 employees at a manufacturing company in Japan regarding 1) their personal diversity beliefs, 2) their perception of colleagues’ diversity beliefs, and 3) their relational and task conflict in the workplace. As hypothesized, the employees’ perceptions of their colleagues’ diversity beliefs were more negative than both their personal beliefs (misalignment) and the average beliefs of colleagues who worked alongside them (misperception). The misalignment and misperception scores had intraclass correlations (r_wg), implying that employees in the same workplace misaligned and misperceived their colleagues’ beliefs to the same degree. We also found that the more employees perceived the misalignment, the more they felt relational conflicts with their colleagues. The results demonstrate pluralistic ignorance about diversity beliefs in an organization and its negative consequences in the form of higher relational conflict.

This study aims to examine the effect of relational mobility on the Willingness to Communicate (WTC) in English of Japanese people. Previous studies have focused on internal factors such as perceived competence and personality to predict the WTC, but did not reveal which environmental factors influenced these factors. This study focused on relational mobility as a socioecological factor. A pilot survey showed that to predict the WTC in English of Japanese people, perceived communication competence in English had the strongest positive effect, as in previous studies. Study 1 showed that relational mobility positively influenced the WTC via perceived competence, targeting university students. Study 2 showed that, targeting different university students, the mediation effect found in Study 1 was confirmed. In addition, we examined whether relational mobility enhanced the WTC via a decreased evaluation concern and increased the perceived competence or not, but the whole indirect effect was not confirmed.

Distributive justice is concerned with how societies should allocate resources. Although vigorously debated, the relationships between normative theories of distributive justice and actual behavior remain unclear. To examine the empirical bases of John Rawls’s moral argument, we tested whether distribution may be psychologically linked to risky personal decisions via voluntary focus on the worst-off position. Extending Kameda et al. (2016), we asked participants to make three types of decisions (social distribution as a third party, risky choices for self, and the Veil of Ignorance [VoI] task in which participants chose social distribution affecting selves without knowing their own positions) and measured physiological arousal during decision making. Participants’ distributive choices were correlated with risky personal decisions such that those who endorsed the Maximin (maximizing the minimum possible payoff) distribution preferred the Maximin gambles. Preferences in the VoI task statistically moderated this correlation. Pupil dilation associated with arousal was also related to these effects. These converging data suggest that social distribution and risky decisions are intertwined in the human mind, as envisioned by Rawls’s normative argument.

Negative stereotypes of mental illness have many kinds of undesirable effects on patients. Existing research has mainly investigated stereotypes of “mental illness” as a general term that covers various kinds of illnesses. While there might be differences among the stereotypes of different specific illnesses, this issue has not been fully focused on in Japan. In the current study, we used the Stereotype Content Model to visualize the stereotype of eight mental illnesses and “mental illness (general term).” The result showed that each mental illness is characterized by distinct stereotype patterns, with differences in associations between competence/warmth and various cognitive aspects (e.g., responsibility, dangerousness, and seriousness) being observed, depending on the mental illness. We discuss the cause of differences in stereotypes for each mental illness and suggest the importance of investigating specific stereotypes in future research.

The current study explored whether the social exchange heuristic (SEH) hypothesis would hold for trust behavior. In previous studies, using prisoner’s dilemma games (PDG), the cooperation rate in the partner-specified condition, in which the interaction partner was determined before decision-making, was higher than in the partner-unspecified condition, in which the partner was not determined, supporting the SEH hypothesis. However, the SEH hypothesis has rarely been tested in other economic games, and it remained unclear whether this would also explain other behaviors. Thus, we tested the SEH hypothesis using a trust game (TG) and a faith game (FG). We manipulated the partner-specificity in an online experiment and found that trust behavior was not influenced by the manipulation either in the TG or the FG. In contrast, a similar experiment with a PDG revealed that cooperation was higher in the partner-specified condition than in the partner-unspecified condition, replicating previous findings. These results suggest that the SEH may not be activated in the TG and FG.

This study focuses on how the imbalance between efforts and rewards relates to active participation in the social and labor markets of senior citizens who retire from the front line of corporate organizations, and it aims to clarify how others’ words are related to their intention to continue in social activities. We asked 104 senior and pre-senior individuals who participated in social activities to describe the words they were happy with and asked about effort-reward imbalance and their intention to leave. Text mining and analysis using KH Coder revealed that there was a difference in characteristic words between when receiving rewards and when no rewards were received. When receiving rewards, words that evaluated work and behavior were seen as characteristic words. On the other hand, when there was no reward, words that focused on the existence of individuals were also seen as characteristic words. This suggests the importance of paying attention to and recognizing the senior generation’s attitudes and actions rather than merely providing monetary rewards.