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Bowing is an act, commonly used in Japan, involving lowering the head and bending the upper body towards another person as a greeting. Studies have shown that the bowing action increases the subjective attractiveness of the face. Specifically, the attractiveness rating of a bowing 3D computer graphics model was found to be higher than those of the bending‐backward or the standing‐still conditions. However, previous studies did not manipulate the duration of the bowing action. This study examined whether the effect of bowing on the facial impression increases as the duration of bowing actions (the bending motion, the bent posture, and the return motion) was prolonged. In Experiment 1, we compared two durations of the bent posture at the peak point under the bending‐forward condition (0 or 1.5 s). In Experiment 2, we also manipulated the effect of the bowing speed (0.5 or 1 s). The results indicated that the effect of bowing on the rating scores of subjective attractiveness increased as the duration of bowing actions was prolonged. Moreover, an identical pattern of results was obtained in judgments of politeness and submissiveness. These findings suggest that the bowing effect is closely related to the cognitive schema of politeness and submissiveness, and thus the formal bowing action produces a positive evaluation by further activating this schema. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies suggest that the 'mere presence' of a mobile phone impairs social interactions and neuropsychological test performance. The present study examined whether the presence of a mobile phone causes spatial bias toward the device during a visual search task. Participants identified a target among spatially distributed non-targets. We manipulated three factors: device presence (mobile phone or notepad), target congruency (congruent or incongruent), and attentional load (set size 8 or 24). A mobile phone (or a notepad in the control condition) was placed on the left side of the computer screen. Participants also completed a questionnaire to measure Internet usage and attachment. Participants with high scores on the questionnaire rapidly identified the target at the congruent (same side as the phone) location, but the mere presence effect did not occur in this condition. In contrast, participants with low scores on the questionnaire demonstrated the mere presence effect, but no spatial bias was observed. These results suggest that the mere presence effect can be modulated by individual differences in the degree to which a device is appealing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, some Japanese women use a sanitary mask to hide their faces when not wearing makeup, perhaps because they believe that they are more attractive (or less ugly) when wearing a sanitary mask than when not wearing makeup. The present study examined the effect of wearing a sanitary mask on the perception of facial attractiveness. We manipulated the presence or absence of a mask in the main experiments or an occluder (e.g., notebook) in control experiments and asked participants to rate facial images. The results revealed that attractive faces wearing a sanitary mask were perceived as less attractive than the same faces without the mask, contrary to Japanese women's belief. This is the first study to demonstrate a new phenomenon, the sanitary-mask effect, in which observers underestimate the physical attractiveness of a mask-wearing face. Importantly, the pattern of the results of perceived attractiveness was substantially altered when a control object occluded the faces. This suggests that facial occlusion by a sanitary mask has a unique effect, due to occlusion and unhealthiness priming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: When two visual targets are presented in rapid succession, perception of the second target is deteriorated if the temporal lag between the two targets is short (0–300 ms). This ‘attentional blink’ (AB) phenomenon has been believed to occur only when the second target is followed by a backward mask or when there is a task switching between two targets. The present study revealed another determining factor for the occurrence of the AB, the presence or absence of a distractor stream. Five experiments examined the effect of possible confounding factors in the extant literature and suggested that the mere presence of a distractor stream affects the processing of targets even when the observers tried to ignore them, resulting in a processing delay. This effect is discussed in a model of AB deficit in terms of decay of the second target's representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]