We conducted a systematic review of conference papers in social psychology at two large psychology conferences in Japan: the Japanese Psychological Association and the Japanese Society for Social Psychology. The conference papers were effectively not subjected to peer review; hence, they were suitable for testing if psychologists selectively reported statistically significant findings without pressure from journal editors and reviewers. We investigated the distributions of -values converted from the -values reported in the articles presented at the 2013 and 2018 conferences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiscrimination, which arose during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, is a global public health issue. This study aimed to provide fundamental knowledge in proposing control measures to mitigate discrimination. We focused on two psychological variables: belief in just deserts (BJD, , the belief that the infected individual deserves to be infected), a psychological factor that potentially promotes discrimination and prejudice, and human rights restrictions (HRR; , the degree of individuals' agreement with government restrictions on citizens' behavior during emergencies).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrejudice related to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a social issue worldwide. A possible psychological factor that promotes prejudice is the belief in just deserts (BJD) regarding individuals infected with COVID-19 (, the belief that the infected individual deserves to be infected). The BJD is based on the belief in immanent justice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Keio Twin Research Center (KoTReC) was established in 2009 at Keio University to combine two longitudinal cohort projects - the Keio Twin Study (KTS) for adolescence and adulthood and the Tokyo Twin Cohort Project (ToTCoP) for infancy and childhood. KoTReC also conducted a two-time panel study of self-control and psychopathology in twin adolescence in 2012 and 2013 and three independent anonymous cross-sectional twin surveys (ToTcross) before 2012 - the ToTCross, the Junior and Senior High School Survey and the High School Survey. This article introduces the recent research designs of KoTReC and its publications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhy does decision making differ among individuals? People sometimes make seemingly inconsistent decisions with lower expected (monetary) utility even when objective information of probabilities and reward are provided. It is noteworthy, however, that a certain proportion of people do not provide anomalous responses, choosing the alternatives with higher expected utility, thus appearing to be more "rational." We investigated the genetic and environmental influences on these types of individual differences in decision making using a classical Allais problem task.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvidence shows that people tend to behave prosocially when they are in the presence of images depicting eyes. There are two proximate causes of the eyes effect. One involves positive motivation to gain future reward and the other involves negative motivation to avoid violating a norm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProsociality is one of the most distinctive features of human beings but there are individual differences in cooperative behavior. Employing the twin method, we examined the heritability of cooperativeness and its outcomes on public goods games using a strategy method. In two experiments (Study 1 and Study 2), twin participants were asked to indicate (1) how much they would contribute to a group when they did not know how much the other group members were contributing, and (2) how much they would contribute if they knew the contributions of others.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMen's altruism may have evolved, via female choice, as a signal of either their genetic quality or their willingness to allocate resources to offspring. The possibility that men display altruism to signal their genetic quality may be tested by examining women's preference for men's altruism across the stages of the menstrual cycle. Because women can maximize reproductive benefits by mating with men who have "good genes" on high-fertility versus low-fertility days, women should show a heightened preference for male altruism on high-fertility days compared to low-fertility days, and this heightened preference should be more apparent when women evaluate men for short-term sexual relationships than for long-term committed relationships.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study describes the development and evaluation of the Self-Report Altruism Scale Distinguished by the Recipient (SRAS-DR). The relationship between an actor and a recipient is important for evolutionary studies of altruistic behavior. However, the existing scale for Japanese undergraduates does not distinguish recipients of altruistic behaviors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Keio Twin Research Center has conducted two longitudinal twin cohort projects and has collected three independent and anonymous twin data sets for studies of phenotypes related to psychological, socio-economic, and mental health factors. The Keio Twin Study has examined adolescent and adult cohorts, with a total of over 2,400 pairs of twins and their parents. DNA samples are available for approximately 600 of these twin pairs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe second to fourth digit ratio has been argued to reflect prenatal hormonal influences and is reportedly associated with various psychological and behavioral traits, such as sexual orientation, cognitive abilities, and personality. We examined genetic and environmental influences on the second to fourth digit ratio (2D:4D) using a Japanese twin sample (N=300). The genetic analysis showed substantial additive genetic influences for both right and left hand 2D:4D.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF