Yohsuke Ohtsubo

Majority Influence Process in Group Judgment: Test of the Social Judgment Scheme Model in a Group Polarization Context

The purpose of this study is to test Davis’s (1996) Social Judgment Scheme (SJS) model, which was proposed as a predictive model of group decision making with continuous alternatives. The SJS model assumes that individual group members’ influence on the group decision exponentially declines with the distance from other members’ judgments (i.e. majority influence process). Fifty-five 3-person groups engaged in eight group polarization tasks. First, the model fits of the SJS model and the Averaging model were compared in terms of the predictive accuracy. Results indicted that the SJS model yielded accurate predictions more often than the Averaging model. Second, a different analytical approach confirmed the model’s corollary—the skewness of individual judgments distribution was negatively correlated with the direction of group polarization. These findings support the model’s assumption of majority influence process in continuous alternatives tasks.

ARE COSTLY APOLOGIES UNIVERSALLY PERCEIVED AS BEING SINCERE? A Test of the Costly Apology-Perceived Sincerity Relationship in Seven Countries

Abstract After inadvertently committing an interpersonal transgression, an offender might make an effortful apology (e.g. cancelling an important meeting to make an apology as soon as possible). Such costly apologies signal the apologisers sincere intention to restore the endangered relationship. The present study investigated this costly signalling model of apology across seven countries (Chile, China, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea and the U.S.). Participants were asked to imagine that a friend had committed an interpersonal transgression against them and had then apologised in either a costly or non-costly fashion. The results showed that costly apologies were perceived to be significantly more sincere than no cost apologies in the all seven countries. We further investigated whether religious beliefs would moderate the effect of costly apologies. Consistent with our prediction and evolutionary hypothesis, costly apologies were perceived to be significantly more sincere than no cost ap...

Costly apology and self-punishment after an unintentional transgression

Abstract Making a costly apology or inflicting self-punishment after an unintentional transgression can serve as a costly signal of the transgressors benign intention. In the present research, after an unintentional transgression (i.e., unequal resource allocation between themselves and a partner), participants were provided with an opportunity to send an apology message to their partner (in Experiments 1 and 2) or to privately deduct some amount from their own reward (in Experiments 2 and 3). Across these experiments, approximately half of the participants indicated their willingness to incur some cost to produce these costly signals. In Experiment 1, neither history nor expectation of interaction with a partner altered the frequency of a costly apology. In Experiment 2, despite explicit instructions that their partner would not be informed whether they had inflicted the self-punishment, the frequency of self-punishment was approximately equal to that of a costly apology. These results suggest that the ...

Effects of Status Difference and Group Size in Group Decision Making

The purpose of this study was to empirically test the finding of Ohtsubo, Fujita, and Kameda’s (in press) thought experiment regarding the relation between the high status member’s influence and the number of low status members in the decision-making groups. Against intuition, the thought experiment showed that increasing low status memberswould not necessarily undermine the high status member’s influence. This study had three-,four-, and five-person groups engage in group decision-making tasks while manipulatingstatus difference by bogus feedback about task-relevant ability. Results showed that the high status members’ overall influence increased when the number of low status membersincreased from three to four. The Social Decision Scheme Model analyses, however,suggested that the observed aggretation process was different from the one assumed inthe thought experiment.

Cross cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride

Significance Cross-cultural tests from 16 nations were performed to evaluate the hypothesis that the emotion of pride evolved to guide behavior to elicit valuation and respect from others. Ancestrally, enhanced evaluations would have led to increased assistance and deference from others. To incline choice, the pride system must compute for a potential action an anticipated pride intensity that tracks the magnitude of the approval or respect that the action would generate in the local audience. All tests demonstrated that pride intensities measured in each location closely track the magnitudes of others’ positive evaluations. Moreover, different cultures echo each other both in what causes pride and in what elicits positive evaluations, suggesting that the underlying valuation systems are universal. Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development, is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the cost-effective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others’ valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function.

Adaptive ingredients against food spoilage in Japanese cuisine.

Billing and Sherman proposed the antimicrobial hypothesis to explain the worldwide spice use pattern. The present study explored whether two antimicrobial ingredients (i.e. spices and vinegar) are used in ways consistent with the antimicrobial hypothesis. Four specific predictions were tested: meat-based recipes would call for more spices/vinegar than vegetable-based recipes; summer recipes would call for more spices/vinegar than winter recipes; recipes in hotter regions would call for more spices/vinegar; and recipes including unheated ingredients would call for more spices/vinegar. Spice/vinegar use patterns were compiled from two types of traditional Japanese cookbooks. Dataset I included recipes provided by elderly Japanese housewives. Dataset II included recipes provided by experts in traditional Japanese foods. The analyses of Dataset I revealed that the vinegar use pattern conformed to the predictions. In contrast, analyses of Dataset II generally supported the predictions in terms of spices, but not vinegar.

Association between salivary serotonin and the social sharing of happiness

Although human saliva contains the monoamine serotonin, which plays a key role in the modulation of emotional states, the association between salivary serotonin and empathic ability remains unclear. In order to elucidate the associations between salivary serotonin levels, trait empathy, and the sharing effect of emotions (i.e., sharing emotional experiences with others), we performed a vignette-based study. Participants were asked to evaluate their happiness when they experience several hypothetical life events, whereby we manipulated the valence of the imagined event (positive, neutral, or negative), as well as the presence of a friend (absent, positive, or negative). Results indicated that the presence of a happy friend significantly enhanced participants’ happiness. Correlation analysis demonstrated that salivary serotonin levels were negatively correlated with happiness when both the self and friend conditions were positive. Correlation analysis also indicated a negative relationship between salivary serotonin levels and trait empathy (particularly in perspective taking), which was measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Furthermore, an exploratory multiple regression analysis suggested that mothers’ attention during childhood predicted salivary serotonin levels. Our findings indicate that empathic abilities and the social sharing of happiness decreases as a function of salivary serotonin levels.

Does dishonesty really invite third-party punishment? Results of a more stringent test

Many experiments have demonstrated that people are willing to incur cost to punish norm violators even when they are not directly harmed by the violation. Such altruistic third-party punishment is often considered an evolutionary underpinning of large-scale human cooperation. However, some scholars argue that previously demonstrated altruistic third-party punishment against fairness-norm violations may be an experimental artefact. For example, envy-driven retaliatory behaviour (i.e. spite) towards better-off unfair game players may be misidentified as altruistic punishment. Indeed, a recent experiment demonstrated that participants ceased to inflict third-party punishment against an unfair player once a series of key methodological problems were systematically controlled for. Noticing that a previous finding regarding apparently altruistic third-party punishment against honesty-norm violations may have been subject to methodological issues, we used a different and what we consider to be a more sound design to evaluate these findings. Third-party punishment against dishonest players withstood this more stringent test.

Contrast Effects and Approval Voting: An Illustration of a Systematic Violation of the Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives Condition

In approval voting, voters indicate all alternatives acceptable to them, instead of indicating their most preferred alternative. This study sought to examine the hypothesis that, under certain conditions, approval voting systematically violates a rationality condition of social choice: the independence of irrelevant alternatives condition. Given a well-known psychological phenomenon, the contrast effect, it was hypothesized that sets of acceptable alternatives might be changed as a result of changes in unacceptable alternatives. This hypothesis was tested in a sample of undergraduates who were presented with fictional profiles of juvenile delinquents and then were asked whether they should be granted parole. The outcomes of approval voting changed merely as the result of a change in an alternative least preferred by all voters.

Experiential purchases and prosocial spending promote happiness by enhancing social relationships

Recent research on consumption and subjective well-being has revealed that experiential purchases and prosocial spending promote happiness by enhancing the purchasers’ social relationships. This study (N = 1523) explored whether undergraduate students’ consumption behaviors during summer break would be associated with their post-break happiness, and whether the consumption–happiness relationship would be mediated by a positive influence on their social relationships. The results showed that both experiential purchases and prosocial spending during summer break were associated with greater post-break happiness, but only when these purchases had a positive influence on the purchasers’ social relationships. These effects remained significant after controlling for respondents’ personality traits, financial standing, and sex. Moreover, both experiential purchases and prosocial spending were more likely to have a positive influence on social relationships than luxury purchases. These results are congruent with the recent exposition that experiential purchases and prosocial spending promote happiness by enhancing the purchasers’ social relationships.