Effects of Pathogen-Avoidance Tendency on Infection-Prevention Behaviors and Exclusionary Attitudes toward Foreigners: A Longitudinal Study of the COVID-19 Outbreak in Japan.

This study investigated the changes in public behaviors and attitudes following the spread of COVID-19 in Japan. Using a longitudinal approach that analyzes the movement of an unpredictable and real infection threat to explain and predict human behavior during the pandemic-a novel approach in behavioral immune system research-a panel survey was conducted on Japanese citizens. The results of the survey, conducted in late January, mid-February, and early March 2020, indicated that the influence of the interaction between the changes in situational infection threat and individual differences in pathogen-avoidance tendency on infection-prevention behaviors and exclusionary attitudes toward foreigners was not significant. Moreover, frequent contact with foreigners had a mitigating effect on exclusionary attitudes. The study thus provided a valuable contribution to the application of behavioral immune-system responses to problems associated with infection threats. Moreover, consideration of the aspects of adaptive reaction and social learning allowed us to observe the process of adaptive strategies in novel environments under conditions of high ecological validity and to accurately understand the psychological response to infectious disease outbreaks.

Effective forewarning requires central route processing: Theoretical improvements on the counterargumentation hypothesis and practical implications for scam prevention.

Financial scams have caused tremendous financial damage globally. In Japan, the police forewarn people by equipping them with scam-prevention techniques or providing awareness regarding examples of previous scams; however, this does not appear to effectively prevent the damage, as many scam victims do not remember these warnings when faced with actual scam encounters. Considering that scammers often use appeal to emotion techniques, peripheral processing during scam attempts might disturb people's abilities to recall the warnings on scammers' modus operandi, thus leading to failed counter-arguing efforts. We verified this hypothesis in an experimental setting by asking 162 participants to remember given forewarnings and resist deceptive advertisements. The results showed that participants gave the advertisers' manipulative intent a higher rating only when they processed the advertisement through a central route, in addition to being forewarned. This means that forewarning had no effect when participants processed the advertisement through a peripheral route. Moreover, forewarning recollection levels mediated the effect of processing route on this rating, which suggests that remembering forewarnings is necessary to generate counterarguments. This result expands the theory on forewarning effects and explains why people are susceptible to scam victimization. Furthermore, it provides implications for scam prevention.

Effects of Labeling and Group Category of Evaluators on Evaluations of Aggression.

This study investigated whether the effect of labeling on people's evaluation of aggression varies according to the group category of the evaluators (i.e., whether they are ingroup members or third parties). Two labeling strategies--the negative labeling of victims (NL strategy) and the positive labeling of aggressors (PL strategy)--were adopted. We conducted an experiment using the hot sauce paradigm, as a way to assess aggressive intent that includes behavioral measures of evaluations. The results suggested that the NL strategy causes ingroup members to evaluate aggression in a more positive light, while the PL strategy has the same effect but on third parties instead. Thus, labeling strategies may increase the severity of aggressors' reaction and could also be a factor that can escalate a war or conflict.