Searching for the universality of nudging: A cross-cultural comparison of the information effects of reminding people about familial support.

Nudging is a method for eliciting a desired behavior. One approach to nudging involves information provision. When information presented for this purpose is designed from an evolutionary perspective, it may reveal a deeper level of rationality within human decision-making that might otherwise appear to be irrational. Based on insights from the evolution of altruism, we previously designed a message to remind people of the benefits they have received from the actions of relatives to realize industrialization. We then demonstrated that using this message in Japan was effective at moderating extreme risk-averse attitudes toward air pollution resulting from industrialization. However, the universality of the intervention effect, including whether it could be affected by exogenous factors, was not explored. Therefore, in the present study, we conducted a randomized controlled trial based on an online survey carried out in Japan, Canada, and the US. The intervention was shown to be effective in all the three countries, but the effect size varied according to segment. Although women showed more intervention effects than men in Japan and the US, no significant sex difference was observed in Canada. In terms of personality traits, higher agreeableness significantly contributed to the intervention effects. The influence of the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated many lifestyle changes, was found to weaken the intervention effect by increasing the message effect in the control group. We propose that this effect was caused by an increased perception of familial support in everyday life. These results suggest that the nudge message was universally effective, although the effect size might have been affected by cultural factors and social events.

Designing information provision to serve as a reminder of altruistic benefits: A case study of the risks of air pollution caused by industrialization.

A well-known phenomenon is that humans perceive risks to threaten future generations as more dangerous in many cases. However, this tendency could be changed depending on certain conditions and could potentially be explained by the evolution of altruism. Our multi-agent simulation model, which was constructed to identify attributes contributing to subjective assessment of a risk source based on kin selection theory, showed that support from relatives can affect the agents' subjective risk assessment. We utilize this insight, which has never been explored in the context of nudge, to show that real-world messages reminding respondents that they are supported by their relatives can moderate the perception of a risk source as extremely dangerous. A randomized control trial based on an internet questionnaire survey was conducted to identify the intervention effect of such messages, using air pollution caused by industrialization as the risk source for the case study. Our analysis suggests that messages moderate extreme attitudes. Presentation of additional visual information can boost the sense of familial support and increase the effect of a message compared with a message comprising only textual information. The attributes and personality traits of the respondents who are responsive to the intervention message are also discussed.

Herd behavior in a complex adaptive system.

In order to survive, self-serving agents in various kinds of complex adaptive systems (CASs) must compete against others for sharing limited resources with biased or unbiased distribution by conducting strategic behaviors. This competition can globally result in the balance of resource allocation. As a result, most of the agents and species can survive well. However, it is a common belief that the formation of a herd in a CAS will cause excess volatility, which can ruin the balance of resource allocation in the CAS. Here this belief is challenged with the results obtained from a modeled resource-allocation system. Based on this system, we designed and conducted a series of computer-aided human experiments including herd behavior. We also performed agent-based simulations and theoretical analyses, in order to confirm the experimental observations and reveal the underlying mechanism. We report that, as long as the ratio of the two resources for allocation is biased enough, the formation of a typically sized herd can help the system to reach the balanced state. This resource ratio also serves as the critical point for a class of phase transition identified herein, which can be used to discover the role change of herd behavior, from a ruinous one to a helpful one. This work is also of value to some fields, ranging from management and social science, to ecology and evolution, and to physics.

Programmed regulation of conformational switching in diagnostic biomolecular automata using error control molecules.

We aim to present novel biomolecular automata for transcriptome diagnosis. We already proposed several biomolecular probes for the prediction of oral squamous cell carcinoma as a model case and evaluated the system noise and sensitivity. Here we introduce an error control element and discuss the specificity of the system.

Real-coded lattice gas model for ternary amphiphilic fluids.

We have developed an amphiphilic surfactant model in the framework of the real-coded lattice gas (RLG), in order to analyze the dynamics and structure of ternary fluids. Formation of both the oil-in-water and the bicontinuous microemulsion phases, as well as the reduction of surface tension by adsorption of surfactant at interface are successfully reproduced in numerical simulations. Our model is simple in terms of description and implementation, however, complex structures and dynamic behavior of the ternary fluids emerge from the collective dynamics of the RLG and surfactant particles.