Kaori Karasawa

Inferences about the Causes of Positive and Negative Emotions

Three experiments examined inferences about the presence of additional causes (multiple causality) when the emotions evoked by an event were either positive or negative. There were also variations in the intensity of the emotional experience, the magnitude of the eliciting event, the direction of the emotion (toward the se4f or another), and the person experiencing the event (self vs. other). It was found that when an event was major, positive emotions were more likely than negative emotions to generate inferences of additional situational and mood contributions (multiple causality). Conversely, dispositions were more likely to be inferred as an additional cause of negative than positive emotions. Further intense emotional reactions and reactions to minor events produced perceptions of more contributing causes than mild emotional expressions and emotional reactions to major events. Distinctions between positive and negative emotions are discussed, and the implications of the data for interpersonal relationships are considered.

Is the Personal Always Political? A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Abortion Attitudes

In a study on abortion attitudes, attributional and symbolic politics approaches were used to develop a model relating symbolic predispositions, perceptions of responsibility for unwanted pregnancy, affects, and attitudes toward abortion in samples from Japan and the United States. College students rated 6 causes of unwanted pregnancy on importance, controllability, responsibility, blame, sympathy, anger, judgments in favor of abortion, and likelihood of helping personally or through government assistance. Symbolic predispositions of religiosity, conservatism, moral traditionalism, and gender-role attitudes were also measured. Path analyses revealed that judgments in favor of abortion and helping were determined by a combination of attributional variables and symbolic predispositions in both samples. However, symbolic predispositions are weaker and the attributional variables are stronger determinants of attitudes in the Japanese sample as compared to the sample from the United States.

Depression among Japanese informal caregivers for elderly people

This study examined the determinants of depression among Japanese informal caregivers for elderly people. Four hundred and fifty-four participants answered questions tapping the subjective evaluation of caregiving situations and depression. A regression analysis revealed that physical strain, negative attitudes of elderly people, unsupportive attitudes of family members, and economic strain significantly increased reports of depression. The discussion considered the importance of interpersonal variables to promote the mental health of informal caregivers in Japan.

Responsibility attribution and support provision in an intergroup context: An examination in a simulated society game1

: Two studies were conducted to examine the relationship between ingroup identification, responsibility attribution, and attitude toward support provision. The data were collected from the participants of a simulated society game named SIMINSOC (Simulated International Society; Hirose, 1997). The global society in the game includes two rich regions and two poor regions, and the poor regions need to obtain support from rich regions for survival. In the two studies, participants were randomly assigned to either rich or poor regions, were engaged in various activities in the game, and answered questions concerning the identification, responsibility attribution, and attitude toward support provision. The results indicated that responsibility attributions were biased to favor the ingroups. Furthermore, poor regions believed that they should be supported more than the rich regions intended to provide support. Structural equation analyses suggested that the intergroup bias in attribution was increased when identification toward the ingroup was strong. The discussion considers the implications of the findings for interactions between groups.

Impact of consumer power on consumers’ reactions to corporate transgression

We addressed how individuals’ power influences their judgments regarding corporate transgressions. Based on the Situated Focus Theory of Power, which theorizes that powerful people respond more in accordance to circumstantial factors, we tested the interaction of power and the type of corporate discourse offered by the accused company. Across two studies (overall N = 216), we experimentally primed power (Study 1) and manipulated participants’ sense of direct control over the company (Study 2). We consistently found an interaction effect of power and corporate discourse on people’s negative attitudes toward the company—particularly on the unwillingness to use the company’s products. Particularly, high-power individuals were prone to strongly vary their attitudes based on the mitigative/non-mitigative nature of the discourse, while those low in power were unsusceptible to the type of discourse. The results suggest how the potential rise of consumer power in society may critically influence the consumer-corporate relationships following corporate transgressions.

We perceive a mind in a robot when we help it

People sometimes perceive a mind in inorganic entities like robots. Psychological research has shown that mind perception correlates with moral judgments and that immoral behaviors (i.e., intentional harm) facilitate mind perception toward otherwise mindless victims. We conducted a vignette experiment (N = 129; Mage = 21.8 ± 6.0 years) concerning human-robot interactions and extended previous research’s results in two ways. First, mind perception toward the robot was facilitated when it received a benevolent behavior, although only when participants took the perspective of an actor. Second, imagining a benevolent interaction led to more positive attitudes toward the robot, and this effect was mediated by mind perception. These results help predict what people’s reactions in future human-robot interactions would be like, and have implications for how to design future social rules about the treatment of robots.

Science, so Close and yet so Far Away: How People View Science, Science Subjects, and Scientists

In this paper, we conduct a review over the existing empirical research to discuss how science and its specific aspects are viewed by the general population. We particularly highlight the potential gap existing in how people perceive science in an abstract sense and science in its more specific forms. We first demonstrate the tendency of people to possess a mix of positive and negative views toward science depending on whether they think in terms of general science or school science, reporting findings from both self-report and implicit measures of attitudes. Second, we discuss about a set of findings speculating about people’s views toward scientists and other science-related individuals. Such studies suggest that people’s images are often affected by stereotypes, which do not portray reality and potentially distance science from people. Based on such facts, we point out several tasks of science education to narrow the gap between people’s abstract and stereotypical images of science and the more specific and actual science.