When two identical objects move toward each other, overlap completely, and continue toward opposite ends of a space, observers might perceive them as streaming through or bouncing off each other. This phenomenon is known as ‘stream/bounce perception’. In this study, we investigated the effect of the presentation of emoticons on stream/bounce perception in five experiments. In Experiment 1, we used emoticons representing anger (‘(‘∧’)’), a smile (‘(^_^)’), and a sober face (‘(°_°)’, as a control), and observers were asked to judge whether two objects unrelated to the emoticon had streamed through or bounced off each other. The anger emoticon biased perception toward bouncing when compared with the smile or sober face emoticon. In Experiments 2 and 3, we controlled for the valence and arousal of emoticons, and found that arousal influenced stream/bounce perception but valence did not. Experiments 4 and 5 ruled out the possibility of attentional capture and response bias for the emoticon with higher arousal. Taken together, the findings indicate that emoticons with higher arousal evoke a mental image of a ‘collision’ in observers, thereby eliciting the bounce perception.

Technological advances in robotics have already produced robots that are indistinguishable from human beings. This technology is overcoming the uncanny valley, which refers to the unpleasant feelings that arise from humanoid robots that are similar in appearance to real humans to some extent. If humanoid robots with the same appearance are mass-produced and become commonplace, we may encounter circumstances in which people or human-like products have faces with the exact same appearance in the future. This leads to the following question: what impressions do clones elicit? To respond to this question, we examined what impressions images of people with the same face (clone images) induce. In the six studies we conducted, we consistently reported that clone images elicited higher eeriness than individuals with different faces; we named this new phenomenon the clone devaluation effect. We found that the clone devaluation effect reflected the perceived improbability of facial duplication. Moreover, this phenomenon was related to distinguishableness of each face, the duplication of identity, the background scene in observing clone faces, and avoidance reactions based on disgust sensitivity. These findings suggest that the clone devaluation effect is a product of multiple processes related to memory, emotion, and face recognition systems.

The cheerleader effect implies that a person in a group look like more attractive than in isolation. Walker and Vul (2014) reported results supporting the existence of the cheerleader effect. We replicated Walker and Vul's Experiment 4, which manipulated group size. Their participants were asked to rate attractiveness of each female face image in a group (one of 4, 9, or 16 members) and in isolation and revealed that attractiveness ratings significantly increased in all the group conditions. We performed two direct replications of this experiment using Japanese participants. As a result, at least one experiment yielded the pattern of the results similar to those of the previous study, although the effect was not significant and the effect size was small.

Facilitation of creative thinking is an important element for innovation. It has been suggested that cognitive resources are involved in creative thinking; however, little evidence of this involvement has been found. To address this issue, the present study focuses on eye closure, which saves more cognitive resources than open eyes. Forty participants experienced both close-eyed and open-eyed conditions, and all of them were asked to generate new names for rice and tea. The results revealed that in the close-eyed condition, participants generated 1.6-times more divergent (unrestricted and flexible) ideas than in the open-eyed condition, suggesting that closing eyes during thinking enhances creativity. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the necessity of cognitive resources in creative thinking.