Vol.23,No.1 August, 2007

Title
The effects of personal relationships on facial expressions during and after a stimulus presentation period
Author
Kyoko YAMAMOTO(Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Doshisha University)
Naoto SUZUKI (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, Doshisha University)
Summary
Previous studies have suggested that the expression of smiles while viewing an emotionally loaded stimulus is facilitated by the presence of friends. This effect seems to be mediated by communication motives. If smiles had a communicative function, a person in front of friends would smile not only during the stimulus presentation period but also after it. In the current study, pairs of friends or strangers were videotaped during and after they viewed film clips, which were expected to elicit positive or negative affects; the control group did not have partners. We measured the duration and the frequency of smiles, frowning, and looking at their partners. Smiles were facilitated by the presence of a friend rather than that of a stranger or than being alone. In the post stimulus presentation period, pairs of friends and strangers smiled a lot, but not lone participants. Gazing also occurred during the post stimulus presentation period. These results suggested that the expression of smiles and gazing could be classified as affiliation behavior with partners.
Key words
facial expressions, personal relationship, stimulus presentation period
Title
A field study of intergroup relations in an ethnically mixed school
Author
Chikae KASUYA (Iwaki Meisei University, College of Humanities)
Summary
This paper explores phases of peer relations between Japanese Bolivians and non-Japanese Bolivians (grades 1-8) at an ethnically mixed school located in the Republic of Bolivia. At the school, studies consisting of participant and systematic observation, structured and semi-structured interviews, and a questionnaire were conducted several times between 1994 and 1997. There were 55 Japanese Bolivians and 109 non-Japanese Bolivians at the school in 1997, when the main data for the paper were gathered. The author noted that Japanese Bolivians had Japanese classes and, through the classes, shared various experiences. Not all the shared experiences revolved uniquely around Japanese culture, but the classes and shared experiences furthered communication and other activities within the group. The experiences reinforced the solidarity of the Japanese Bolivians and separated them from the non-Japanese Bolivians. That is to say, the shared experiences of the Japanese Bolivians created further boundaries between the ethnic groups.
Key words
ethnic group, peer relations, situational context, fieldwork, Japanese Bolivian children in grades 1-8
Title
Participants' predication patterns in small group communications
Author
Manabu FUJIMOTO and Ikuo DAIBO (Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University)
Summary
his study aimed to examine participants' predication patterns in small group communications. Distinctive prediction patterns from utterance data were extracted from two experiments which were different in acquaintanceship, controlled situations and group size. Specific patterns were related to personal traits. The interesting difference of the predication patterns between Study 1 and Study 2 was the presence or absence of “listeners." In Study 1, which has conversations by three persons, the participants needed to be actively involved in conversations to establish communication. In contrast, the participants in large groups were able to participate passively in conversation. Therefore, the notion of “listener" as a predication pattern was extracted from Study 2, which has conversations by five persons.
Key words
predication patterns, small group communication, conversation space system, communication style
Title
The effects of interpersonal relationships on self-effacement
Author
Itaru ISHIGURO (Faculty of Humanities, Hirosaki University)
Fumio MURAKAMI (Graduate School of Humanities and Social Science, Kobe University)
Summary
Self-effacement has become an important topic in cross-cultural social psychology. However, descriptive characteristics of self-effacement have rarely been investigated. Based on representative network survey data, this study examined to whom Japanese people efface themselves. The results indicated as follows: 1) people tend to efface themselves to their neighbors or mere acquaintances more than to their spouses, colleagues, or best friends; 2) the duration of the relationship correlated negatively with self-effacement; 3) the relationship between psychological intimacy and self-effacement shaped reversed-U; and 4) people tend to efface themselves to maintain or attenuate their status difference, i.e., people efface themselves more to colleagues when the people considered those colleagues to be superior to them, and also to best friends when they considered those friends to be inferior to them.
Key words
self-effacement, self-presentation, interpersonal relationship, status difference
Title
Mutual influence processes between self-evaluation on the Internet and actual self-evaluation: Perspectives on the relation between psychological well-being and discrepancies in multiple aspects of self-evaluation
Author
Koji HASEGAWA (Faculty of Arts, Shinshu University)
Kakuko MIYATA (Department of Sociology, Meiji Gakuin University)
Mitsuhiro URA (Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima University)
Summary
This study examined the mutual influence processes between self-appraisal on the Internet and actual self-appraisal. Specifically, we researched the discrepancies in each self-evaluation, and how the degree of those discrepancies related to mental health. In a forum on the Internet, a survey with a two-wave panel design was conducted on the Web for mothers with pre-school children who were exchanging childcare information. At the time of each investigation, the actual self-appraisal (SA), the reflected self-appraisal (RSA: participants infer how a significant other evaluates them), the reflected self-appraisal on the Net (RSA-N: participants infer how a significant other in the forum in which they participate evaluates them), and mild depression were measured as an index of mental health. The result showed that the discrepancy between SA and RSA-N was significantly larger than the discrepancy between SA and RSA. We further found that the level of the RSA-N score was significantly lower than that of RSA or SA. However, depression was not influenced by the lowness of the RSA-N score or the discrepancy between SA and RSA-N, but was instead influenced by the lowness of the SA score or the discrepancy between SA and RSA. Moreover, Path analysis found the self-process on the Internet. Specifically, Time 1 SA affected Time 2 RSA; in turn, RSA correlated with RSA-N at Time 2. These results suggested that the self-appraisal on the Internet was formed based on actual self-appraisal by using the Internet about an actual problem.
Key words
actual self-appraisal, reflected self-appraisal, reflected self-appraisal on the Net, depression
Title
The effects of relationship intimacy on two types of illusion of transparency in an attempt to convey one's internal experience
Author
Mia TAKEDA (Graduate School of Humanities, Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Makoto NUMAZAKI (Faculty of Urban Liberal Arts, Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Summary
We examined the effects of relationship intimacy on two types of illusion of transparency when people try to convey, rather than conceal, their internal experience: the message-sender's illusion of transparency (a tendency whereby message-senders overestimate the degree to which their intentions are correctly inferred by receivers) and the message-receiver's illusion of transparency (a tendency whereby message-receivers overestimate the degree to which they correctly infer the sender's intentions). In 2 studies, senders picked up the one among five illustrations which is the best to communicate one of four intentions. Then they judged whether the receivers would be able to correctly infer their intentions. Receivers saw the illustrations and inferred which intention the senders were trying to communicate, then judged whether they themselves would be able to correctly infer the sender's intention. Results showed both type of illusion of transparency. In addition, the magnitude of the two types of illusion of transparency was greater in intimate relationships than in non-intimate relationships. Effects related to correspondence to audience-design were not found. The results were discussed in terms of interpersonal relationships.
Key words
relationship intimacy, illusion of transparency, illusion of asymmetric insight, intention
Title
Narrative relationships in an interview: Participant observation in an ecotour
Author
Yoh FUMINO (Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Tokyo Metropolitan University)
Summary
This study investigated narrative styles and narrative relationships that were interactionally accomplished by a researcher and participants by conducting participant observation and interviews with 10 participants in an ecotour which contributes to the sustainability of a local community and its environment. Results indicated that two interviewer-interviewee relationships, “inquirer-respondent" and “tour-participants," different from each other in terms of their narrative styles and the visualization of co-membership, were accomplished during the interviews. They correspond to the two general concepts of narrative relationships: dialogic and coexistent (Yamada, 2004), respectively. This study also revealed that there was another important relationship, the “narrating-hearing experience,” which is intermediate between the other two relationships. These findings imply the possibility that participatory research to examine the joint narrative of ecotours contributes to the practice of environmental education.
Key words
interviews, narratives, relationships, participant observation, environmental education
Title
The effect of mobile phone e-mailing in socialization in adolescents: Focusing on the homogeneity and heterogeneity of personal networks and tolerance
Author
Tetsuro KOBAYASHI (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science)
Ken'ichi IKEDA (Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo)
Summary
The effect of mobile phone e-mailing on young people's social tolerance was investigated by analyzing survey data of high school students in Japan. The results show that mobile phone e-mailing had a positive promoting effect on the homogeneity and a negative effect on the heterogeneity of personal networks. This in turn had a negative effect on social tolerance toward others. Mobile phone e-mailing enables students to select homogeneous others as companions of communication and thus brings a bias of homogeneity into their personal networks. This homogeneity bias in turn had a negative effect on the development of social tolerance in the socialization process by reducing the chance of interaction with heterogeneous others.
Key words
mobile phone e-mailing, tolerance, personal network, homogeneity/heterogeneity, socialization
Title
The relationship between social skills deficits and depression, loneliness, and social anxiety: Rethinking a vulnerability model of social skills deficits
Author
Atsushi AIKAWA (The United Graduate School of Education, Tokyo Gakugei University)
Masami FUJITA (Kita Ward Oji Elementary School, Tokyo)
Kengo TANAKA (Faculty of Business Administration, Osaka University of Economics)
Summary
The present study investigated the validity for Japanese students of a vulnerability model of social skills deficits proposed by Segrin (1996). According to the model, it was assumed that social skills deficits were not causes or consequences of depression, loneliness, and social anxiety. Rather, they constituted vulnerability factors, and it was the interaction of social skills deficits and negative life events that predicted the development of depression, loneliness, and social anxiety. Two hundred and fifty-three students recorded scales of social skills, depression, loneliness, and social anxiety three times at intervals of three months. Results indicated that the interaction of social skills deficits and negative life events predicted the development of depression, loneliness, and social anxiety significantly in some cases, but social skills deficits alone were also significant in their prediction. It was considered that the method of using a multiple regression analysis following Segrin (1996, 1999) would not be appropriate for proving the model. The validity of lumping depression, loneliness, and social anxiety together and applying them to the same model was discussed.
Key words
social skills, vulnerability model, depression, loneliness, social anxiety
Title
Regret in decision-making: When maintaining the status quo leads us to regret
Author
Rumiko DOHKE and Koji MURATA (Graduate School of Social Sciences, Hitotsubashi University)
Summary
The research into decision-making has shown that people express less regret in a repeating choice than in a switching choice (i.e., the status quo effect). However, recent research has suggested that when a prior experience was negative, less regret was expressed in a switching choice than in a repeating choice (i.e., the reversal of the status quo effect). We conducted a replication using different scenarios to examine the conditions in which those effects would occur. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the valence (positive, negative) of a prior experience and asked the participants to rate how much regret they thought the decision-maker would have felt. As predicted, the status quo effect occurred in the positive-experience condition, and the reversal of it occurred in the negative-experience condition. In Experiment 2, we manipulated the levels of the decisionmaker's responsibility. The results suggested that a stronger reversal effect was observed in the high responsibility condition. The limitation and the implication of these findings for regret research are discussed.
Key words
regret, decision-making, status quo effect, reversal of the status quo effect, responsibility