Men with high dark triad personality traits can accurately infer dark triad traits from other people's faces.

Introduction: The literature suggests that people can accurately infer dark triad (DT) personality traits from other peoples' faces. Using a self-report scale, this study investigated the impact of participants' DT personality traits on their ability to accurately infer other peoples' DT traits from facial cues.

Methods: We created composite facial photographs of Japanese people with varying Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism scores.

Tolerating dissimilar other when primed with death: neural evidence of self-control engaged by interdependent people in Japan.

Mortality salience (MS) has been shown to lead to derogation of others with dissimilar worldviews, yet recent research has shown that Asian-Americans who presumably adopt an interdependent self-construal (SC) tend to reveal greater tolerance after MS induction. In the present study, we demonstrated that Japanese individuals who are high on interdependent SC indeed show greater tolerance toward worldview-threatening other in the MS (vs control) condition, thus replicating the prior research. Extending this research, we also found that interdependent people's tolerance toward worldview-threatening other was mediated by increased activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex in the MS condition.

Time course and localization of brain activity in humor comprehension: An ERP/sLORETA study.

Although a number of studies have investigated the incongruity-detection and resolution process in humor comprehension, it is difficult to functionally and anatomically dissociate these processes. We used event-related potentials (ERP) and standardized low resolution brain electromagnetic tomography analysis (sLORETA) to examine the time course and localization of brain activity during incongruity detection and resolution. We used the same materials as in our previous fMRI study.

Non-conscious neural regulation against mortality concerns.

Social psychological studies have shown that an experience of threat such as an encounter with death-related stimuli and social exclusion results in tuning toward positive emotional information. Neuroimaging studies have also begun to uncover the neural basis of threat coping, and in this literature, the activity of the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) has been suggested to play a key role in detection and regulation of threats. Using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), we examined the activity of rVLPFC while participants were subliminally primed with the concept of "death" or the control concept "pain".

Family socioeconomic status modulates the coping-related neural response of offspring.

Substantial research links economic adversity to poor coping in stressful or threatening environments. Neuroimaging studies suggest that activation of the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) plays a key role in self-control, and it seems that individual differences in neurocognitive systems underlying self-control are determined in part by subjective childhood socioeconomic status (SES). The present study used near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) to investigate whether subjective childhood SES moderates rVLPFC activity during one form of threatening environment: social exclusion.

Temporal distance insulates against immediate social pain: an NIRS study of social exclusion.

Social exclusion often evokes social pain in excluded individuals. Although this pain can trigger various interpersonal difficulties (e.g.

Does higher general trust serve as a psychosocial buffer against social pain? An NIRS study of social exclusion.

Social exclusion evokes social pain in excluded individuals. Neuroimaging studies suggest that this social pain is associated with activation of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), with further regulation of social pain being reflected in activation of the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC). The present study focused on factors that influence activation of the rVLPFC during social exclusion.