Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to instructions and suggestions from governments and ex... more Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to instructions and suggestions from governments and experts to maintain social (physical) distance between people to prevent aerosol transmission of the virus, which is now becoming the norm. Thus, we examined whether the pandemic extended the distance between personal belongings. Methods: We recruited 68 university students and instructed them to place their belongings on a long table following another participant (i.e., confederate). We measured the physical distance between the two belongings (i.e., the participant’s and the confederate’s). We collected data between June 10, 2022 and January 23, 2023. Pre-pandemic data was from Ariga (2016). Analysis was completed with one-tailed t-tests. Results: Compared with the pre-pandemic results, via one-tailed t-test, the distance between the two belongings during the pandemic was significantly longer. Our results supported the hypothesis that the psychological framework for processing people’s b...
Some journals and publishers offer a free or paid rapid peer review service. In the latter case, ... more Some journals and publishers offer a free or paid rapid peer review service. In the latter case, such a service is offered at a premium, i.e., for an additional fee, and authors receive, in return, a privileged service, namely faster peer review. In the cutthroat world of survival in academia, the difference of a few weeks or months in terms of speed of peer review and publication may bring untold benefits to authors that manage to benefit from accelerated peer review. We examine the deontological aspects behind this two-tier peer review system, including some positive, but mainly negative, aspects. Some paid accelerated peer review services thrive. We examine the paid accelerated peer review services by Taylor & Francis, Future Medicine Ltd., Elsevier, and two stand-alone journals that are OASPA members. This suggests that there is a demand, and thus market, for faster peer review. However, this privilege risks creating a two-tiered system that may divide academics between those who can pay versus those who cannot. We recommend that those papers that have benefited from accelerated peer review clearly indicate this in the published papers, as either a disclaimer or within the acknowledgements, for maximum transparency of the peer review and publication process.
A continued lack of clarity persists because academics, policymakers, and other interested partie... more A continued lack of clarity persists because academics, policymakers, and other interested parties are unable to clearly define what is a “predatory” journal or publisher, and a potentially wide gray zone exists there. In this perspective, we argue that journals should be evaluated on a continuum, and not just in two shades, black and white. Since evaluations about what might constitute “predatory” are made by humans, the psychological decision-making system that determines them may induce biases. Considering such human psychological characteristics might shed light on the deterministic criteria that have been used, and continue to be used, to classify a journal or publisher as “predatory”, and perhaps, bring additional clarity to this discussion. Better methods of journal evaluation can be obtained when the factors that polarize journal evaluations are identified. As one example, we need to move away from simply using whitelists and blacklists and educate individual researchers abo...
In the midst of the current reproducibility crisis in psychology, pre-registration is considered ... more In the midst of the current reproducibility crisis in psychology, pre-registration is considered a remedy to increase the reliability of psychological research. However, because pre-registration is an unconventional practice for most psychological researchers, they find it difficult to introduce pre-registration into their studies. To promote pre-registration, this article provides a detailed and practical step-by-step tutorial for beginners on pre-registration with Open Science Framework. Furthermore, a typical example what beginners might experience and ways to resolve such issues are provided as supplementary material. Finally, we discuss various issues related to pre-registration, such as transparent research, registered reports, preprints, and open science education. We hope that this article will contribute to the improvement of reproducible psychological science in Japan.
In the risky-choice framing effect, different wording of the same options leads to predictably di... more In the risky-choice framing effect, different wording of the same options leads to predictably different choices. In a large-scale survey conducted from March to May 2020 and including 88,181 participants from 47 countries, we investigated how stress, concerns, and trust moderated the effect in the Disease problem, a prominent framing problem highly evocative of the COVID-19 pandemic. As predicted by the appraisal-tendency framework, risk aversion and the framing effect in our study were larger than under typical circumstances. Furthermore, perceived stress and concerns over coronavirus were positively associated with the framing effect. Contrary to predictions, however, they were not related to risk aversion. Trust in the government’s efforts to handle the coronavirus was associated with neither risk aversion nor the framing effect. The proportion of risky choices and the framing effect varied substantially across nations. Additional exploratory analyses showed that the framing eff...
Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to understanding fraud, few studies have exam... more Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to understanding fraud, few studies have examined how the physical environment can influence the likelihood of committing fraud. One recent study found a link between room brightness and occurrence of human fraud behaviors. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate how temperature may affect fraud. Based on a power analysis using the effect size observed in a pilot study, we recruited 105 participants and randomly divided them into three temperature groups (warm, medium, and cool). We then counted fraud behaviors in each group and tested for potential significant differences with a Kruskal-Wallis test. Additionally, we used a correlation analysis to determine whether the perceived temperature affected fraud. As a result, regardless of participants’ subjective sensory experience or their physical environment, we did not find that temperature-related factors influence the incidence of fraud. We discussed the potential reason f...
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2015
This paper presents what the authors call the `divergence problem' regarding choosing between dif... more This paper presents what the authors call the `divergence problem' regarding choosing between different future possibilities. As is discussed in the first half, the central issue of the problem is the difficulty of temporally locating the `active cause' on the modal divergent diagram. In the second half of this paper, we discuss the `second-person freedom' which is, strictly, neither compatibilist negative freedorn nor incompatibilist positive freedom. The divergence problem leads us to two hypethetical views (i,e. the view of single-line determination and that of one-off chance), and these views bring humans closer to the dree sidei.e. outside of the contrast between being free and being unfree. The ctfree side is greatly different from the ordinary human side. This paper tries to secure the secondperson freedom as a substitute for the ordinary human freedom while preventing the divergence problem from arising.
Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate pe... more Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate perception of such objects, and this occurrence is known as the affordance effect. This study examined whether object affordances facilitate the initial visual processing stage, or perceptual entry processes, using the temporal order judgment task. The onset of the graspable (right-handled) coffee cup was perceived earlier than that of the less graspable (left-handled) cup for right-handed participants. The affordance effect was eliminated when the coffee cups were inverted, which presumably conveyed less affordance information. These results suggest that objects preattentively potentiate the perceptual entry processes in response to their affordances.
One major source of high exhaustion for researchers is the redundant paperwork of three different... more One major source of high exhaustion for researchers is the redundant paperwork of three different documents (research papers, applications for ethics review, and applications for research grants) for the same research plan. These similar documents are submitted to three different organizations, each with its own format, and independently peer-reviewed three times. This is a wasteful and redundant process for researchers. Here, we propose a trinity review that integrates scientific, ethics, and research funding reviews. In our proposed trinity review system, scientific and ethics reviews are undertaken concurrently for a pre-experimental research protocol. When the protocol is accepted in principle through these review processes, a funding review will occur, and researchers will conduct their studies. After experiments or surveys, the scientific review will be conducted for a completed version of the paper including results and discussions (i.e., the full paper) again, and the full p...
The current study examined whether regularity of dot patterns would influence time perception. We... more The current study examined whether regularity of dot patterns would influence time perception. We presented observers the dot patterns with three levels of regularity (high, middle and low) and measured the perceived duration of each pattern by bisection and rating methods. The results revealed that the perceived duration of high regular patterns was longer than that of middle and low regular patterns. Thus, we found that stimulus regularity is one of the factors that influence time perception.
The cheerleader effect implies that a person in a group look like more attractive than in isolati... more The cheerleader effect implies that a person in a group look like more attractive than in isolation. Walker and Vul (2014) reported results supporting the existence of the cheerleader effect. We replicated Walker and Vul's Experiment 4, which manipulated group size. Their participants were asked to rate attractiveness of each female face image in a group (one of 4, 9, or 16 members) and in isolation and revealed that attractiveness ratings significantly increased in all the group conditions. We performed two direct replications of this experiment using Japanese participants. As a result, at least one experiment yielded the pattern of the results similar to those of the previous study, although the effect was not significant and the effect size was small.
The present study investigated whether aurally presented mimetic words affect the judgment of the... more The present study investigated whether aurally presented mimetic words affect the judgment of the final position of a moving object. In Experiment 1, horizontal apparent motion of a visual target was presented, and an auditory mimetic word of “byun” (representing rapid forward motion), “pitari” (representing stop of motion), or “nisahi” (nonsense syllable) was presented via headphones. Observers were asked to judge which of two test stimuli was horizontally aligned with the target. The results showed that forward displacement in the “pitari” condition was significantly smaller than in the “byun” and “nisahi” conditions. However, when non-mimetic but meaningful words were presented (Experiment 2), this effect did not occur. Our findings suggest that the mimetic words, especially that meaning stop of motion, affect spatial localization by means of mental imagery regarding “stop” established by the phonological information of the word.
Artificial objects often subjectively look eerie when their appearance to some extent resembles a... more Artificial objects often subjectively look eerie when their appearance to some extent resembles a human, which is known as the uncanny valley phenomenon. From a cognitive psychology perspective, several explanations of the phenomenon have been put forth, two of which are object categorization and realism inconsistency. Recently, MacDorman and Chattopadhyay (2016) reported experimental data as evidence in support of the latter. In our estimation, however, their results are still consistent with categorization-based stranger avoidance. In this Discussions paper, we try to describe why categorization-based stranger avoidance remains a viable explanation, despite the evidence of MacDorman and Chattopadhyay, and how it offers a more inclusive explanation of the impression of eeriness in the uncanny valley phenomenon.
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to instructions and suggestions from governments and ex... more Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to instructions and suggestions from governments and experts to maintain social (physical) distance between people to prevent aerosol transmission of the virus, which is now becoming the norm. Thus, we examined whether the pandemic extended the distance between personal belongings. Methods: We recruited 68 university students and instructed them to place their belongings on a long table following another participant (i.e., confederate). We measured the physical distance between the two belongings (i.e., the participant’s and the confederate’s). We collected data between June 10, 2022 and January 23, 2023. Pre-pandemic data was from Ariga (2016). Analysis was completed with one-tailed t-tests. Results: Compared with the pre-pandemic results, via one-tailed t-test, the distance between the two belongings during the pandemic was significantly longer. Our results supported the hypothesis that the psychological framework for processing people’s b...
Some journals and publishers offer a free or paid rapid peer review service. In the latter case, ... more Some journals and publishers offer a free or paid rapid peer review service. In the latter case, such a service is offered at a premium, i.e., for an additional fee, and authors receive, in return, a privileged service, namely faster peer review. In the cutthroat world of survival in academia, the difference of a few weeks or months in terms of speed of peer review and publication may bring untold benefits to authors that manage to benefit from accelerated peer review. We examine the deontological aspects behind this two-tier peer review system, including some positive, but mainly negative, aspects. Some paid accelerated peer review services thrive. We examine the paid accelerated peer review services by Taylor & Francis, Future Medicine Ltd., Elsevier, and two stand-alone journals that are OASPA members. This suggests that there is a demand, and thus market, for faster peer review. However, this privilege risks creating a two-tiered system that may divide academics between those who can pay versus those who cannot. We recommend that those papers that have benefited from accelerated peer review clearly indicate this in the published papers, as either a disclaimer or within the acknowledgements, for maximum transparency of the peer review and publication process.
A continued lack of clarity persists because academics, policymakers, and other interested partie... more A continued lack of clarity persists because academics, policymakers, and other interested parties are unable to clearly define what is a “predatory” journal or publisher, and a potentially wide gray zone exists there. In this perspective, we argue that journals should be evaluated on a continuum, and not just in two shades, black and white. Since evaluations about what might constitute “predatory” are made by humans, the psychological decision-making system that determines them may induce biases. Considering such human psychological characteristics might shed light on the deterministic criteria that have been used, and continue to be used, to classify a journal or publisher as “predatory”, and perhaps, bring additional clarity to this discussion. Better methods of journal evaluation can be obtained when the factors that polarize journal evaluations are identified. As one example, we need to move away from simply using whitelists and blacklists and educate individual researchers abo...
In the midst of the current reproducibility crisis in psychology, pre-registration is considered ... more In the midst of the current reproducibility crisis in psychology, pre-registration is considered a remedy to increase the reliability of psychological research. However, because pre-registration is an unconventional practice for most psychological researchers, they find it difficult to introduce pre-registration into their studies. To promote pre-registration, this article provides a detailed and practical step-by-step tutorial for beginners on pre-registration with Open Science Framework. Furthermore, a typical example what beginners might experience and ways to resolve such issues are provided as supplementary material. Finally, we discuss various issues related to pre-registration, such as transparent research, registered reports, preprints, and open science education. We hope that this article will contribute to the improvement of reproducible psychological science in Japan.
In the risky-choice framing effect, different wording of the same options leads to predictably di... more In the risky-choice framing effect, different wording of the same options leads to predictably different choices. In a large-scale survey conducted from March to May 2020 and including 88,181 participants from 47 countries, we investigated how stress, concerns, and trust moderated the effect in the Disease problem, a prominent framing problem highly evocative of the COVID-19 pandemic. As predicted by the appraisal-tendency framework, risk aversion and the framing effect in our study were larger than under typical circumstances. Furthermore, perceived stress and concerns over coronavirus were positively associated with the framing effect. Contrary to predictions, however, they were not related to risk aversion. Trust in the government’s efforts to handle the coronavirus was associated with neither risk aversion nor the framing effect. The proportion of risky choices and the framing effect varied substantially across nations. Additional exploratory analyses showed that the framing eff...
Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to understanding fraud, few studies have exam... more Despite the considerable amount of research devoted to understanding fraud, few studies have examined how the physical environment can influence the likelihood of committing fraud. One recent study found a link between room brightness and occurrence of human fraud behaviors. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate how temperature may affect fraud. Based on a power analysis using the effect size observed in a pilot study, we recruited 105 participants and randomly divided them into three temperature groups (warm, medium, and cool). We then counted fraud behaviors in each group and tested for potential significant differences with a Kruskal-Wallis test. Additionally, we used a correlation analysis to determine whether the perceived temperature affected fraud. As a result, regardless of participants’ subjective sensory experience or their physical environment, we did not find that temperature-related factors influence the incidence of fraud. We discussed the potential reason f...
Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science, 2015
This paper presents what the authors call the `divergence problem' regarding choosing between dif... more This paper presents what the authors call the `divergence problem' regarding choosing between different future possibilities. As is discussed in the first half, the central issue of the problem is the difficulty of temporally locating the `active cause' on the modal divergent diagram. In the second half of this paper, we discuss the `second-person freedom' which is, strictly, neither compatibilist negative freedorn nor incompatibilist positive freedom. The divergence problem leads us to two hypethetical views (i,e. the view of single-line determination and that of one-off chance), and these views bring humans closer to the dree sidei.e. outside of the contrast between being free and being unfree. The ctfree side is greatly different from the ordinary human side. This paper tries to secure the secondperson freedom as a substitute for the ordinary human freedom while preventing the divergence problem from arising.
Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate pe... more Perceived objects automatically potentiate afforded action. Object affordances also facilitate perception of such objects, and this occurrence is known as the affordance effect. This study examined whether object affordances facilitate the initial visual processing stage, or perceptual entry processes, using the temporal order judgment task. The onset of the graspable (right-handled) coffee cup was perceived earlier than that of the less graspable (left-handled) cup for right-handed participants. The affordance effect was eliminated when the coffee cups were inverted, which presumably conveyed less affordance information. These results suggest that objects preattentively potentiate the perceptual entry processes in response to their affordances.
One major source of high exhaustion for researchers is the redundant paperwork of three different... more One major source of high exhaustion for researchers is the redundant paperwork of three different documents (research papers, applications for ethics review, and applications for research grants) for the same research plan. These similar documents are submitted to three different organizations, each with its own format, and independently peer-reviewed three times. This is a wasteful and redundant process for researchers. Here, we propose a trinity review that integrates scientific, ethics, and research funding reviews. In our proposed trinity review system, scientific and ethics reviews are undertaken concurrently for a pre-experimental research protocol. When the protocol is accepted in principle through these review processes, a funding review will occur, and researchers will conduct their studies. After experiments or surveys, the scientific review will be conducted for a completed version of the paper including results and discussions (i.e., the full paper) again, and the full p...
The current study examined whether regularity of dot patterns would influence time perception. We... more The current study examined whether regularity of dot patterns would influence time perception. We presented observers the dot patterns with three levels of regularity (high, middle and low) and measured the perceived duration of each pattern by bisection and rating methods. The results revealed that the perceived duration of high regular patterns was longer than that of middle and low regular patterns. Thus, we found that stimulus regularity is one of the factors that influence time perception.
The cheerleader effect implies that a person in a group look like more attractive than in isolati... more The cheerleader effect implies that a person in a group look like more attractive than in isolation. Walker and Vul (2014) reported results supporting the existence of the cheerleader effect. We replicated Walker and Vul's Experiment 4, which manipulated group size. Their participants were asked to rate attractiveness of each female face image in a group (one of 4, 9, or 16 members) and in isolation and revealed that attractiveness ratings significantly increased in all the group conditions. We performed two direct replications of this experiment using Japanese participants. As a result, at least one experiment yielded the pattern of the results similar to those of the previous study, although the effect was not significant and the effect size was small.
The present study investigated whether aurally presented mimetic words affect the judgment of the... more The present study investigated whether aurally presented mimetic words affect the judgment of the final position of a moving object. In Experiment 1, horizontal apparent motion of a visual target was presented, and an auditory mimetic word of “byun” (representing rapid forward motion), “pitari” (representing stop of motion), or “nisahi” (nonsense syllable) was presented via headphones. Observers were asked to judge which of two test stimuli was horizontally aligned with the target. The results showed that forward displacement in the “pitari” condition was significantly smaller than in the “byun” and “nisahi” conditions. However, when non-mimetic but meaningful words were presented (Experiment 2), this effect did not occur. Our findings suggest that the mimetic words, especially that meaning stop of motion, affect spatial localization by means of mental imagery regarding “stop” established by the phonological information of the word.
Artificial objects often subjectively look eerie when their appearance to some extent resembles a... more Artificial objects often subjectively look eerie when their appearance to some extent resembles a human, which is known as the uncanny valley phenomenon. From a cognitive psychology perspective, several explanations of the phenomenon have been put forth, two of which are object categorization and realism inconsistency. Recently, MacDorman and Chattopadhyay (2016) reported experimental data as evidence in support of the latter. In our estimation, however, their results are still consistent with categorization-based stranger avoidance. In this Discussions paper, we try to describe why categorization-based stranger avoidance remains a viable explanation, despite the evidence of MacDorman and Chattopadhyay, and how it offers a more inclusive explanation of the impression of eeriness in the uncanny valley phenomenon.
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Papers by Yuki Yamada