How do RARA Student Fellows approach their research on a daily basis? What do they learn by conducting research? How do they overcome the obstacles they encounter in the doctoral program? In the third installment of our interview series to introduce RARA Student Fellows' studies and their envisioned career paths, we sat down with Yuko Kida, a third-year doctoral student in the Graduate School of Human Science.

Striving to scientifically define what a human being is

――You advanced from the College of Comprehensive Psychology into the Graduate School of Human Science. Where did your interest in research originate?

Kida: First and foremost, I was interested in psychology. In high school, I was fascinated by philosophy and psychology, even though I served as head of the Natural Sciences Club. I wanted to explore the question of what exactly a human being is from as many angles as possible. Out of the various interests I had, I chose psychology because it seemed to me to be a discipline where I could pursue an understanding of humanity in a truly scientific way.

――Out of the various areas within psychology, we hear that you’ve are researching animacy. What exactly is animacy?

Kida: Animacy refers to the phenomenon of perceiving inanimate objects as if they were alive. For example, you may have had the experience of seeing a piece of trash on the roadside and thinking it somehow looked like a living creature. I first learned about animacy in an introductory course during the first year of my undergraduate studies, and it immediately piqued my interest. However, in Japan and even around the world, there are not many researchers working on animacy. So, during my undergraduate years, I didn’t focus on animacy, but rather, my research topic was visual information processing. It was only when I entered the Graduate School of Human Science that I began researching animacy in earnest, after Professor Kohske Takahashi,—one of the very few researchers in the field—joined Ritsumeikan University.

――If animacy is still a relatively new area of study, I imagine there must be plenty of interesting topics to explore.

Kida: Indeed. It is fascinating, but to be honest, it’s also quite challenging (laughs). That’s because the word animacy has not actually been clearly defined yet. The term, which is used in linguistics, is seen as a concept of higher cognitive processing, and is sometimes even addressed in the field of robotics. In this context, I personally treat it primarily as a visual -perceptual phenomenon. For example, even though we casually look at things in our daily lives, I often think about whether our perception is actually correct.

――Why do we perceive inanimate objects as if they were living things?

Kida: Animacy research is still in its infancy, and the mechanisms behind why we perceive objects as living things are still unclear. In the field of cognitive psychology, research has reached the stage of exploring conditions one at a time with regard to why certain movements look like the movements of living things.

――I see.

Kida: While the mechanisms themselves are not yet fully understood, the question of why we possess such functions is often explained with a hypothesis that they were advantageous during the evolutionary process. For example, in a forest, failing to notice a snake poses a life-threatening risk, but mistaking a vine for a snake carries little risk. Of course, it would be ideal to both notice snakes and avoid false alarms, but like a fire alarm, creating the perfect detection system is quite difficult. Therefore, I believe our current perceptual mechanisms have been shaped through natural selection and learning, while striking a balance between which type of error carries less risk.

Overcoming the replicability problem in psychology with open science

――We have heard that you always keep the replicability problem in mind when pursuing psychological research.

Kida: The replicability problem is something that is being addressed in a wide variety of research fields, not just psychology. In short, it refers to the issue of other researchers being unable to obtain the same results as those from a published study when trying to replicate it under the same conditions. At one time, especially in the field of psychology, there were many cases where other researchers were unable to reproduce the findings of prominent papers. Since my classmates and I are now in the generation that followed that one, we play particular attention to replicability when conducting our research. Specifically, I strive to keep careful records from the planning stage onwards and to disclose my experimental methods and data. I place value on the open science approach, which ensures that everyone has access to all aspects of the research process.

――Did you learn programming or any other skills to further your psychology experiments?

Kida: I taught myself the programming languages MATLAB, Python, and JavaScript, and I have also used jsPsych, a JavaScript library specialized for psychological experiments, to develop experimental programs. I have also learned statistical methods such as Bayesian modeling, and I use them to analyze data and build models. Using the methods of psychology, especially the open science approach, I have been able to develop a stance of always looking at the big picture, and on top of this, I acquired skills in programming and statistics. Before I even realized it, it seems that this training has helped me to cultivate new strengths.

――So, the data science approach can be considered as viewing things from a scientific perspective to understand the situation through data.

Kida: That’s right. By pursuing psychology through the lens of open science, I found myself naturally acquiring a data science approach along the way. It was during my internship that I realized this had become one of my strengths.

Realizing new-found values while on internship

――We heard that you did an internship at Japan Post Insurance. Tell us about that.

Kida: Thanks to the RARA Student Fellowship program, I took part in a roundtable discussion between companies and students, where I happened to meet someone from Japan Post Insurance. The person I spoke with turned out to be a data scientist in the Digital Services Promotion Department. Since that department (now called the DX Strategy Department as of 2025) already had members with a background in psychology, they were receptive to the idea that psychology is closely connected with data science, so they took an interest in me. As our conversation continued, they asked me, ‘If you could work on data analysis, what would you like to do?’ and after a while, I was eventually invited for an internship.

――What specific topics did you work on during your internship?

Kida: I applied psychological experimental methods to help solve the issues the company was facing. Specifically, I considered how to design the company's MyPage. I used the open science approach to consider how we could design a MyPage that would be user-friendly for everyone, overcoming barriers such as the digital divide across age groups? As a result, I was accepted for a long-term internship of about seven weeks.

――That sounds like a very challenging topic for an internship.

Kida: Since I had never worked in a company before, I didn’t know to what extent my expertise would be useful outside of academia. It certainly wasn’t an easy topic, but I could more or less imagine how to proceed based on the research I had done up to that point. I also had a good grasp of the statistical methods necessary for moving the project forward, and I was able to draw on my skills in producing specific formats and doing the underlying programming. So, the internship turned out to be a highly rewarding experience.

――That must have given you a new appreciation of yourself that you might not have realized in the lab.

Kida: Exactly. In fact, they highly valued my ability to plan and analyze research, which I had acquired through my research work to date, as well as the speed at which I could write programs. That experience helped me realize that I could actually succeed as a data scientist in a corporate setting.

Aiming to become a data scientist who can connect a wide range of disciplines

――What prompted you to apply for the RARA Student Fellowship in the first place?

Kida: To be honest, I applied because I was rejected for a JSPS Fellowship. However, as a RARA Student Fellow, I realized that I had been blessed with opportunities to come into contact with companies. In fact, I was able to establish a connection with Japan Post Insurance, which makes me realize how generous the RARA Student Fellowship Program is in providing you with follow-up support. Doctoral students, and humanities students in particular, tend to be isolated. That’s why opportunities like roundtable discussions with companies and the various other RARA Student Fellow networking events are a great source of emotional support.

――What do you have in mind for your future career path?

Kida: Based on the sense of fulfillment I gained from my internship and the confidence I gained in my own value, my first priority is to find a job with a company. I do not just want some kind of vague general position; I specifically want to work in a field where I can apply my data science skills. From what I heard at Japan Post Insurance, it’s clear that the demand for data scientists is not limited to the IT sector. In fact, data scientists are now sought after in almost every industry. Moreover, it is not a career reserved only for science or computer science graduates. Much like in research, the work involves first thinking through the overall structure, then writing the necessary programs, analyzing the data, and ultimately finding solutions to problems. For those of us in the humanities and social sciences who have trained in these research methods, the ability to think through the overall structure can be a major strength.

――Finally, do you have a message for students considering applying to become RARA Student Fellows?

Kida: Above all, I want to stress that being a RARA Student Fellow is extremely valuable. There are many benefits, but one of the biggest is that you’re not left isolated. The roundtable discussions and networking events allow you to meet all kinds of people from different graduate schools and gain fresh appreciation for the value of your own research. Like me, you can also make contacts with companies and gain new perspectives beyond academia. So, my message is simple: becoming a RARA Student Fellow is truly worthwhile.