An international survey of perceptions of the 2014 FIFA World Cup: National levels of corruption as a context for perceptions of institutional corruption.

We conducted a survey about the 2014 FIFA World Cup that measured attitudes about FIFA, players, and officials in 18 languages with 4600 respondents from 29 countries. Sixty percent of respondents perceived FIFA officials as being dishonest, and people from countries with less institutional corruption and stronger rule of law perceived FIFA officials as being more corrupt and less competent running the tournament than people from countries with more corruption and weaker rule of law. In contrast, respondents evaluated players as skilled and honest and match officials as competent and honest. We discuss the implications of our findings for perceptions of corruption in general.

Stress hormones predict hyperbolic time-discount rates six months later in adults.

OBJECTIVES: Stress hormones have been associated with temporal discounting. Although time-discount rate is shown to be stable over a long term, no study to date examines whether individual differences in stress hormones could predict individuals' time-discount rates in the relatively distant future (e.g., six month later), which is of interest in neuroeconomics of stress-addiction association. METHODS: We assessed 87 participants' salivary stress hormone (cortisol, cortisone, and alpha-amylase) levels and hyperbolic discounting of delayed rewards consisting of three magnitudes, at the time-interval of six months. For salivary steroid assays, we employed a liquid chromatography/ mass spectroscopy (LC/MS) method. The correlations between the stress hormone levels and time-discount rates were examined. RESULTS: We observed that salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) levels were negatively associated with time-discount rates in never-smokers. Notably, salivary levels of stress steroids (i.e., cortisol and cortisone) negatively and positively related to time-discount rates in men and women, respectively, in never-smokers. Ever-smokers' discount rates were not predicted from these stress hormone levels. CONCLUSIONS: Individual differences in stress hormone levels predict impulsivity in temporal discounting in the future. There are sex differences in the effect of stress steroids on temporal discounting; while there was no sex defference in the relationship between sAA and temporal discounting.

[Accuracy of judgment about others' cooperative behavior: effects of attractiveness and facial expressiveness].

Cooperation in interdependent relationships is based on reciprocity in repeated interactions. However, cooperation in one-shot relationships cannot be explained by reciprocity. Frank, Gilovich, & Regan (1993) argued that cooperative behavior in one-shot interactions can be adaptive if cooperators displayed particular signals and people were able to distinguish cooperators from non-cooperators by decoding these signals. We argue that attractiveness and facial expressiveness are signals of cooperators. We conducted an experiment to examine if these signals influence the detection accuracy of cooperative behavior. Our participants (blind to the target's behavior in a Trust Game) viewed 30-seconds video-clips. Each video-clip was comprised of a cooperator and a non-cooperator in a Trust Game. The participants judged which one of the pair gave more money to the other participant. We found that participants were able to detect cooperators with a higher accuracy than chance. Furthermore, participants rated male non-cooperators as more attractive than male cooperators, and rated cooperators more expressive than non-cooperators. Further analyses showed that attractiveness inhibited detection accuracy while facial expressiveness fostered it.

Salivary alpha-amylase levels and big five personality factors in adults.

OBJECTIVES: Salivary alpha-amylase (sAA) has been utilized as a non-invasive measure of sympathoadrenal medullary (SAM) activation. Little is known regarding the relationship between personality inventories and baseline sAA. This study was designed to examine the relationships between the scores of big five inventory (BFI) factors, age, and sAA in adults (aged twenty to seventy years old). METHODS: We assessed 97 participants' BFI scores and sAA. The correlations between the BFI factor scores and sAA were examined. RESULTS: We observed (1) a positive correlation between Neuroticism and sAA, and a negative correlation between Agreeableness and sAA and (2) a positive correlation between age and sAA. These correlations between BFI scores and sAA remained significant after controlling for age. After controlling for age, all BFI factors except Conscientiousness were related to sAA. CONCLUSIONS: Subjects with high Neuroticism and low Extraversion, Agreeableness and Openness may have high sAA. sAA has been demonstrated to be useful for examining the relationship between adrenergic activity and personality, in a non-invasive manner.

[Intergroup threat and intragroup interdependence: multiplicity of psychological processes behind ingroup favoritism, and their distinct elicitors].

Recent research has suggested that two distinct psychological processes lead to ingroup favoritism in the minimal group paradigm (MGP): the motivation to gain positive intergroup distinctiveness, and the motivation to maintain intragroup cooperation. In this study, we tested a hypothesis based on the adaptationist perspective, that different situational cues suggesting intergroup threat or intragroup interdependence would elicit ingroup favoritism via these distinct psychological processes. Ninety-one Japanese undergraduates participated in a minimal group experiment and performed a reward allocation task. The results supported our predictions. Participants did not show ingroup favoritism in the control condition, where only pure ingroup-outgroup categorization was made. However, they showed ingroup favoritism when they were exposed to intergroup threat in an ostensibly unrelated task prior to reward allocation (intergroup threat condition). Moreover, a positive correlation between ingroup favoritism and the motivation to maximize positive intergroup distinctiveness was observed only in the intergroup threat condition. Likewise, participants showed ingroup favoritism in the interdependence condition, where they were presented with cues suggesting interdependence within the ingroup. The significance and implications of the findings are discussed.