Inconsistent advice by ChatGPT influences decision making in various areas.

The ChatGPT technology is increasingly becoming a part of our daily lives and is starting to be utilized in various decision-making contexts. The current study builds upon prior research, demonstrating that people's moral decision-making is influenced by ChatGPT across three perspectives, as evidenced by two studies (total n = 1925). The findings suggested that ChatGPT advice impacted decision-making similarly to expert advice, although not all decisions were susceptible to influence, particularly those based on negative emotions. Additionally, ChatGPT advice affected decisions beyond moral judgments, but no effect was observed when the advice recommended immediate low rewards. Moreover, individuals with a higher tendency for personal fear of invalidity were more likely to be influenced by both expert and AI advice, but this was not related to trust in AI.

Influence of mothers' stress on their infants' stress level: A preliminary study.

Background: In a previous study, mothers' stress was demonstrated to affect the stress of their infants. However, stress is a multi-layered concept, and there is a lack of studies on the type of stress that influences infant stress. Objective: This study examined how various types of mothers' stress influence their infants' stress by measuring stress that emanates from COVID-19, child rearing, and stress levels based on speech and cortisol in saliva. Methods: This study was conducted in two phases, and the stress of 21 mother-infant dyad were evaluated using questionnaires, participants' saliva, and voice recording. Results: The results demonstrated that maternal stress increased infant stress, rearing stress decreased infant stress, and COVID-19 stress did not affect infant stress. Furthermore, there was no relationship between stress measured using questionnaires and stress measured using saliva, indicating that these factors independently affect infant stress. Conclusion: It is clear that stress is multi-layered and that it is necessary to grasp each of the various stresses and their relationship appropriately.

Interoceptive sensitivity and perception of others' emotions: an investigation based on a two-stage model.

Recent research shows that sensitivity to interoceptive sensitivity is associated with a more granular experience of emotions. These studies suggest that individuals sensitive to their interoceptive signals can better perceive somatic physiological changes as compared to their counterparts. Therefore, they discriminate among a wide and subtle range of emotions. Further, the perception of others' emotions could be based on our own emotional experiences. However, whether interoceptive sensitivity is related to the perception of others' emotions remains unclear. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between interoceptive sensitivity and emotional perception. Considering the model that emotion perception comprises two processes, categorization of facial expressions and approach-avoidance responses, this study examined both categorizations of facial expressions and approach-avoidance responses. The results showed no relationship between interoceptive sensitivity and the perception of emotion, which suggests that interoceptive sensitivity is related to the experience of emotion but does not affect the granularity of emotional perception. Future studies should diversely and empirically examine the role of the body in emotional perception from the perspective of interoceptive sensitivity.

The more emotional words you know, the higher your mental health.

Previous studies have associated emotional granularity, the degree to which emotions can be recognized, with mental health comprehensively; however, they have found its measurement method to be burdensome. Therefore, this study considered emotional vocabulary, which is theoretically associated with mental health, to examine this relationship. A web-based survey was conducted among 397 Japanese subjects to examine the relationship between emotional vocabulary size and emotional granularity, and an exploratory analysis was also performed to examine the relationship between emotional vocabulary size and mental health. The results showed a significant positive correlation between emotional vocabulary size and emotional granularity. Furthermore, significant correlations were found between emotional vocabulary size and mental health. These results suggest that emotional vocabulary can influence mental health. The relationship between emotional vocabulary size and mental health and issues for future studies were also discussed.

Social sensitivity predicts accurate emotion inference from facial expressions in a face mask: a study in Japan.

Most prior research examining whether emotions can be accurately inferred from facial expressions with masks have been conducted with Western samples. Thus, there is a current lack of studies on this topic, as well as on factors affecting individual differences in the accuracy of emotion inference, among non-Western samples. This study examined the effects of social anxiety and social sensitivity on the accuracy of emotion inference from masked facial expressions in a Japanese sample. The results showed that wearing a mask made it difficult to identify the emotions of sadness and fear, happy and neutral expressions remained unaffected, and angry expressions were read more accurately. Further, while the findings show that a general higher ability to infer emotions from facial expressions may help ensure the accuracy of emotion inference from facial expressions with a mask, social sensitivity directly predicted the accuracy of emotion inference from facial expressions with a mask. These findings suggest that people who can infer complex mental states of others from subtle cues may be less susceptible to the effects of face masks.

Development of Emotion Recognition from Facial Expressions with Different Eye and Mouth Cues in Japanese People.

Research has reported that Japanese people are more likely to focus on and look longer at eyes when reading emotions from facial expressions than their western counterparts. However, how these tendencies develop and whether there is a relationship between the two tendencies (to focus on the eyes and to look longer at the eyes) is unclear. The present study examined emotion recognition and gaze patterns in Japanese preschool children (n = 51) and university students (n = 57), using facial expressions with different eye and mouth cues. The results showed developmental changes in emotion recognition, with adults being more sensitive to negative emotions, whereas gaze patterns showed no developmental changes. Furthermore, there was no relationship between emotion recognition and gaze patterns. This suggests that the implicit and explicit processing of emotion recognition develops at different times, and that there is no direct relationship between the two processes.

Approach-avoidance behavioural patterns towards an affective voice.

Facial expressions are evolutionarily acquired social signals that are processed rapidly by the receiver when deciding to either approach or avoid the person sending the signal. The predominance of the approach or avoidance responses has been examined for various facial expressions. Similar to facial expressions, the approach-avoidance response to affective voice may have been acquired evolutionarily. However, studies examining approach-avoidance to an affective voice are limited. This study used the approach-avoidance task framework developed for facial expressions to determine the dominant behavioural responses to affective voices that indicate either happiness or anger. The results show that the approach response was dominant for the happy voice, while the avoidance response was dominant for the angry voice. This tendency was observed even without the presence of any facial stimuli. These results suggest that an affective voice may be an evolutionarily acquired approach-avoidance-inducing social signal, similar to facial expressions.

Overcoming Lexical Bias in the Judgment of Emotion in Speech: Role of Executive Function and Usefulness Understanding in Young Children.

Studies have shown that when listening to speech sounds that express different emotions through prosodic and lexical content, adults tend to judge a speaker's emotion based on prosody, while young children tend to judge a speaker's emotion based on lexical content. This study examined three factors that can help 3- to 5-year-old children overcome their lexical bias and use prosody to judge a speaker's emotion. The results showed that an understanding of the usefulness of prosody to infer emotion from speech influenced young children's tendency to focus on prosody, and that only children with well-developed executive functions could judge a speaker's emotions by focusing on prosody-to the extent that they could read emotions from it. To achieve this, in addition to understanding, children needed to switch their attention away from lexical content and read emotions from prosody.

Approach-avoidance responses and categorical perception of ambiguous facial expressions.

Emotion perception of facial expressions involves two processes: quick approach-avoidance responses and subsequent sorting into emotional categories (i.e., happiness, anger), considering the context. Sorting of morphed ambiguous facial expressions is known to occur categorically, but the occurrence of approach-avoidance responses for morphed facial expressions is yet to be investigated. The present study used morphed angry and fearful facial expressions and measured approach-avoidance responses among Japanese university students (Experiment 1, n = 29). Similar experiments with linguistic load (Experiment 2, n = 28) and visual load (Experiment 3, n = 29) were conducted. The results indicated categorical perception in the sorting of facial expressions but no approach-avoidance response for morphed expressions. Furthermore, linguistic load affected the categorisation of facial expressions, but neither linguistic load nor visual load affected the approach-avoidance response. These results support the idea that the non-linguistic approach-avoidance response and the linguistic categorisation of facial expressions are two different processes. The nature of the emotional perception process is also discussed.

Dual Development of Affective-Speech-Based Emotion Perception.

Studies have shown that when interpreting emotions from speech, adults focus on prosody, while young children focus on lexical content. However, the kind of socio-emotional processing implemented in such emotion perception, as well as how it is developed, remains unclear. The present study examined the development of a dual process in affective-speech-induced emotion perception in 3- and 5-year-old children. Previous studies have suggested that unconscious emotion perception at the gaze level and conscious emotion judgment in response to speakers' emotions develop differently. Children were presented with affective speech, which included inconsistent lexical content and prosody (e.g., saying 'thank you' in an angry tone), and asked to report the speaker's emotions by pointing to the corresponding facial expressions (happy or angry). Additionally, the duration for which children gazed at each facial expression was examined. The results showed that 3-year-old children judged the speaker's emotions based on lexical content more than the 5-year-olds, who used prosody. However, at the gaze level, both the 3- and 5-year-olds focused longer on the facial expressions that matched the prosody. The results suggest that two processes can be observed: unconscious emotion perception, which matches prosody and expression, and assessment of the speaker's emotions by weighting the lexical content and prosody.

Young Children Do Not Label Facial Expressions Spontaneously: A Brief Investigation of the Label Superiority Effect.

A label superiority effect refers to the tendency of young children to categorize facial expressions based on emotion labels (e.g., "happy") more accurately than those based on photographs of facial expressions (e.g., "smile"). However, it is unclear whether this effect stems from inaccuracies in children's spontaneous labeling of facial expressions or their tendency not to label facial expressions spontaneously. To further explore the label superiority effect, Japanese children aged 3-5 years (N = 48) were assigned to one of three conditions: label cue, photo cue, and compelled to label, and asked to categorize facial expressions by emotion by placing cards in a box. The children correctly put more facial expressions in the box for label cues than photo cues, but the compelled to label group performed as well as the label cues group. These results suggest that the label superiority effect occurs because children do not label facial expressions spontaneously, and this tendency may explain their difficulty in understanding facial expressions.

Influence of Color on Emotion Recognition Is Not Bidirectional: An Investigation of the Association Between Color and Emotion Using a Stroop-Like Task.

The association between color and emotion has been shown, with red facilitating recognition of anger and green facilitating recognition of happiness. However, it has been unclear if emotional stimulus conversely facilitates and/or inhibits recognition of such colors. This study used a Stroop-like task, which required participants to ignore facial expressions and recognize color, in order to investigate the influence of emotion on recognition of color. In addition, this study investigated the association between color and emotion recognition from emoticons, as it was recently suggested that the process of emotion recognition from emoticons was different from that of actual faces. Results revealed that for facial expressions and emoticons, color influenced emotion recognition, in line with previous studies. Conversely, facial expression did not influence recognition of color. The results suggest that in emotion recognition people consider surrounding contextual information and integrate it automatically; however, in color recognition, they do not.

Anti-proliferative activity of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 in human prostate cells.

1α-Hydroxylation of 25-hydroxyvitamin D3 is believed to be essential for its biological effects. In this study, we evaluated the biological activity of 25(OH)D3 itself comparing with the effect of cell-derived 1α,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1α,25(OH)2D3). First, we measured the cell-derived 1α,25(OH)2D3 level in immortalized human prostate cell (PZ-HPV-7) using [(3)H]-25(OH)D3. The effects of the cell-derived 1α,25(OH)2D3 on vitamin D3 24-hydroxylase (CYP24A1) mRNA level and the cell growth inhibition were significantly lower than the effects of 25(OH)D3 itself added to cell culture. 25-Hydroxyvitamin D3 1α-hydroxylase (CYP27B1) gene knockdown had no significant effects on the 25(OH)D3-dependent effects, whereas vitamin D receptor (VDR) gene knockdown resulted in a significant decrease in the 25(OH)D3-dependent effects. These results strongly suggest that 25(OH)D3 can directly bind to VDR and exerts its biological functions. DNA microarray and real-time RT-PCR analyses suggest that semaphorin 3B, cystatin E/M, and cystatin D may be involved in the antiproliferative effect of 25(OH)D3.

Structure-based design of a highly active vitamin D hydroxylase from Streptomyces griseolus CYP105A1.

CYP105A1 from Streptomyces griseolus has the capability of converting vitamin D 3 (VD 3) to its active form, 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D 3 (1alpha,25(OH) 2D 3) by a two-step hydroxylation reaction. Our previous structural study has suggested that Arg73 and Arg84 are key residues for the activities of CYP105A1. In this study, we prepared a series of single and double mutants by site-directed mutagenesis focusing on these two residues of CYP105A1 to obtain the hyperactive vitamin D 3 hydroxylase. R84F mutation altered the substrate specificity that gives preference to the 1alpha-hydroxylation of 25-hydroxyvitamin D 3 over the 25-hydroxylation of 1alpha-hydroxyvitamin D 3, opposite to the wild type and other mutants. The double mutant R73V/R84A exhibited 435- and 110-fold higher k cat/ K m values for the 25-hydroxylation of 1alpha-hydroxyvitamin D 3 and 1alpha-hydroxylation of 25-hydroxyvitamin D 3, respectively, compared with the wild-type enzyme. These values notably exceed those of CYP27A1, which is the physiologically essential VD 3 hydroxylase. Thus, we successfully generated useful enzymes of altered substrate preference and hyperactivity. Structural and kinetic analyses of single and double mutants suggest that the amino acid residues at positions 73 and 84 affect the location and conformation of the bound compound in the reaction site and those in the transient binding site, respectively.