This study examined a hypothesized model in which stalking victims' perceptions of the perpetrator's personality are related to their psychological distress. A web-based survey was administered to individuals from the general population who had experienced a breakup within the past five years and were approached by their ex-partner. A total of 207 individuals (73 men, 134 women) were ultimately included in the analysis. The results of the multi-population simultaneous analysis, conducted using structural equation modeling separately for men and women, showed that for men, experiences of unwanted pursuit behavior and perception of the perpetrator's neuroticism were related to psychological distress. In contrast, for women, the results indicated that the experience of unwanted pursuit behavior and perception of the perpetrator's neuroticism and agreeableness were related to psychological distress. These findings suggest the importance of considering the effects of stalking victims' perceptions of the perpetrators' personalities on psychological distress.

Psychology aims to establish universal theories of the mind. However, a growing number of studies have demonstrated that psychological constructs, which constitute theories, are susceptible to cultural variability. This may threaten the aim of psychology. Few studies have investigated temporal variability in constructs likely to underlie current cultural variability. This study explored diachronic semantic changes of constructs in contemporary psychology in Japan using Infinite SCAN, a natural language processing technique, to estimate the number of contexts in which psychological terms representing constructs occur and changes in the proportion of those contexts across periods. The target corpora were obtained from the main texts of the articles published in the Japanese Journal of Psychology between 1974 and 2023. The results revealed that contexts of the terms have changed over the past 50 years. According to distributional semantics, the contextual changes in the psychological terms represent the semantic changes in the constructs. The diachronic semantic changes of constructs should be considered in psychological research and practice.

The Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFV, Clifford et al., 2015) was developed to measure moral attitudes using scenarios involving fictional individuals engaging in morally offensive behavior. Here, we present a Japanese version of the Moral Foundations Vignettes (MFV-J) and examine its validity. Analysis of the responses from 443 participants suggested that the best-fit model was a nine-factor model, which the original study theoretically assumed. To assess construct validity, we examined the association between each factor of the MFV-J and the Japanese version of the Moral Foundations Questionnaires. These results demonstrate a pattern similar to those reported in previous studies. Based on these results, the usefulness of the MFV-J is discussed.

This study aimed to develop the Japanese version of the Spitefulness Scale (SS-J) and evaluate its reliability and validity. Japanese participants (N = 1,500) completed the SS-J and questionnaires assessing the Dark Triad personality traits, Big Five personality traits, and Internet trolling behavior. Exploratory factor analysis revealed that the SS-J had a unidimensional structure comprising 15 items. The scale demonstrates strong internal consistency. Moreover, the SS-J scores were positively correlated with Dark Triad personality traits-Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism-including Internet trolling behavior. Conversely, SS-J scores were negatively correlated with Agreeableness, a Big Five personality trait. These findings align with previous studies' findings and provide evidence for the SS-J's convergent and concurrent validity.

The damage caused by fraud and consumer issues remains significant in Japan, although various cases have been widely introduced in consumer education. We hypothesize that hindsight bias would reduce or reverse the warning effects in these cases. Hindsight bias refers to the cognitive tendency to believe that one has predicted an event's outcome after it has occurred, even though it was previously unpredictable. Participants read sentences sequentially regarding a scenario involving a potential victim (A) and a potential fraudster (B). Half of the participants were told that the scenario concerned an actual consumer issue (consumer issue condition). In contrast, the others were told it was a daily (control condition) event. After each sentence, they judged whether the character B was trustworthy. The results showed that participants in the consumer issue condition judged the character B as untrustworthy earlier than those in the control condition. This suggests that hindsight bias occurs when individuals read consumer issue cases, potentially leading to unintended overconfidence in their judgments.

This study examined the causal bidirectional relationship between peer socialization time and self-esteem during early adolescence. A four-month-long two-wave panel survey was conducted with 1,196 junior high school students (M = 13.28 years; 565 women). The questionnaire measured self-esteem and the time spent on various activities, including studying, interacting with peers from the same or different schools, interacting with caregivers, and being alone. All time variables were statistically analyzed using lagged and simultaneous-effect models to control for confounding factors. The results revealed a positive effect of self-esteem on time spent with same-school peers. However, no reciprocal effects were observed. These findings suggest that high self-esteem promotes school adjustment and peer interaction. Finally, this study discusses the need for future research to examine the interplay between the "quantity" and "quality" of peer socialization.

General strain theory posits the existence of conditioning factors that influence individuals' subjective strain (i.e., subjective perceptions of objective strain), negative emotions, and criminal coping when they encounter undesirable events or conditions (i.e., objective strain). However, the conditioning factors that influence these elements remain unclear. Nonetheless, research has recognized the time perspective as an essential factor influencing cognition, emotion, and behavior. We used a questionnaire survey with 252 participants (126 men and women each) to test a model incorporating the time perspective as a conditioning factor within the framework of the general strain theory. We found that time perspective directly influenced criminal coping and indirectly influenced it through subjective strain and negative emotions. Positively reconstructing interpretations of past experiences, reducing feelings of powerlessness in the present, and fostering motivation for the future is crucial for lowering criminal coping.