Projects
- Origins of Prejudice and Social Division Intergroup Relations
Political Psychology
- How We Know “Right” and “Wrong” Moral Psychology
Psychology and Law
- Mutuality of Mind and Culture Cultural Psychology
Communication and Culture
What’s New
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The joint research project with Professors Yoko Sugitani and Taku Togawa (Faculty of Economics, Sophia University) has received a Yoshida Hideo Memorial Research Award.
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Professor Karasawa will serve as the President-Elect of the Asian Association of Social Psychology for the years of 2021-2023 and as the President for 2023-2025
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Now available online: Group Processes & Intergroup Relations
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Now available on line: Japanese Journal of Psychology
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Awards 2020
About Us
In general terms, the members of our lab conduct research in a field known as social cognition.
Social cognition is a subfield of social psychology, which is concerned mainly with how people make sense of their social worlds - consisting of other people around them as well as the groups and communities to which they belong.
Research Gallery
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Japanese National Identity
Karasawa, Tsukamoto, & Ryu (2020). Can patriotism be distinguished from nationalism? Empirical evidence concerning Japanese national identity and Its ideological significance. Poster presented at SPSP Annual Conference (New Orleans, LA, USA)
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Stereotype and Language
Iori KASAHARA (Ph.D. Student) presented at SPSP 2020 (New Orleans, LA, USA).
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Wice, Karasawa, Matsui, & Miller (2020)
Knowing minds: Culture and perceptions of mental state access. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 319-327.
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Matsuo, Sasahara, Taguchi, & Karasawa (2019)
Development and validation of the Japanese Moral Foundations Dictionary. PLOS ONE, 14(3): e0213343
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Talk at TEDxNagoyaU
Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Social Divisiveness
(in Japanese)
Global Research Network

Collaborations with researchers in south-america
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Materialist and post-materialist concerns and the wish for a strong leader in 27 countries
Lima, M. E. O., de França, D. X., Jetten, J., Pereira, C. R., Ariyanto, A., Autin, F., Ayub, N., Badea, C., Tomasz Besta, T., Butera, F., Costa-Lopes, R., Fantini, C., Finchilescu, G., Gaertner, L., Gollwitzer, M., Ángel Gómez, Á, González, R., Hong, Y-y., Jensen, D. H., Karasawa, M., Kessler, T., Klein, O., Jasinskaja-Lathi, I., Megevand, L., Morton, T., Paladino, P., Polya, T., Renvik, T. A., Ruza, A., Shahrazad, W., Shama, S., Smith, H. J., Torres, A. R., van der Bles, A. M., & Wohl, M. J. A. (2021). Materialist and post-materialist concerns and the wish for a strong leader in 27 countries. Journal of Social and Political Psychology, 9(1), 207-220. https://doi.org/10.5964/jspp.6213We explore whether objective higher levels of democracy are differentially associated with materialist and post-materialist concerns and, in turn, whether this is related to the wish for a strong leader. Testing this hypothesis across 27 countries (n = 5,741), we demonstrated a direct negative effect of democracies’ development on the wish for a strong leader. Further, multi-level mediation analysis showed that the relation between the Democracy Index and the wish for a strong leader was mediated by materialist concerns. -
Explaining illness with evil: Pathogen prevalence fosters moral vitalism.
Bastian, B., Vauclair, M., Loughnan, S., Bain, P., … Karasawa, M., et al. (2019). Explaining illness with evil: Pathogen prevalence fosters moral vitalism.
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. -
“Our country needs a strong leader right now”: Economic inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader.
Sprong, S., Jetten, J., Wang, Z., Peters, K., Mols, F., Verkuyten, M., Bastian, B., … Karasawa, M., et al., (2019). “Our country needs a strong leader right now”: Economic inequality enhances the wish for a strong leader.
Psychological Science, 30, 1-13. DOI: 10.1177/0956797619875472 -
Regaining in-group continuity in times of anxiety about the group’s future: A study on the role of collective nostalgia across 27 countries.
Smeeks, A., Jetten, J., Verkuyten, M., Wohl, M. J. A., Jasinskaya-Lahti, I., …, Karasawa, M. et al. (2018). Regaining in-group continuity in times of anxiety about the group’s future: A study on the role of collective nostalgia across 27 countries.
Social Psychology. (Published online, October 9). DOI: 10.1027/1864-9335/a000350 -
Cultural values moderate the impact of relative deprivation.
Smith, H. J. , Ryan, D. A., Jaurique, A., Pettigrew, T. F., Jetten, J., …. Karasawa, M., et al. (2018). Cultural values moderate the impact of relative deprivation.
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49, 1183-1218. DOI: 10.1177/0022022118784213 -
Revisiting the measurement of anomie.
Teymoori A, Jetten J, Bastian B, Ariyanto A, Autin F, Ayub N, et al. (2016) Revisiting the measurement of anomie.
PLOS ONE, 11(7): e0158370. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0158370