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Social interaction is a central feature of people's life and engages a variety of cognitive resources. Thus, social interaction should facilitate general cognitive functioning. Previous studies suggest such a link, but they used special populations (e.g., elderly with cognitive impairment), measured social interaction indirectly (e.g., via marital status), and only assessed effects of extended interaction in correlational designs. Here the relation between mental functioning and direct indicators of social interaction was examined in a younger and healthier population. Study i using survey methodology found a positive relationship between social interaction, assessed via amount of actual social contact, and cognitive functioning in people from three age groups including younger adults. Study 2 using an experimental design found that a small amount of social interaction (10 min) can facilitate cognitive performance. The findings are discussed in the context of the benefits social relationships have for so many aspects of people's lives. Keywords: cognitive performance; socializing; mental exercise; social intelligence; executive function; group living

Women are bombarded with images of women's sexual submission and subservience to male partners. The authors argue that women internalize this submissive role, namely, they associate sex implicitly with submission. The authors propose that this association leads to submissive sexual behavior, thereby reducing sexual autonomy and arousal. Study 1 found that women implicitly associated sex with submission. Study 2 showed that women's implicit association of sex with submission predicted greater personal adoption of a submissive sexual role. Study 3 found that men did not implicitly associate sex with submission. Study 4 demonstrated that women's adoption of a submissive sexual role predicted lower reported arousal and greater reported difficulty becoming sexually aroused; sexual autonomy mediated these effects. Keywords: gender roles; sexual arousal; autonomy; implicit; power; submission

This study employed the integrated threat theory of intergroup attitudes to examine the attitudes of Black and White students toward the other racial group. This theory synthesizes previous research on the relationships of threats to intergroup attitudes. Structural equation modeling revealed that for both racial groups, realistic threats, symbolic threats, and intergroup anxiety predicted attitudes toward the other group. To varying degrees, the effects of negative contact, strength of ingroup identity, perceptions of intergroup conflict, perceived status inequality, and negative stereotyping on negative racial attitudes were mediated by the three threat variables. The model accounted for more variance in the negative attitudes of Whites toward Blacks than in the negative attitudes of Blacks toward Whites. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The research reported here examined whether misanthropic memory occurs for groups, that is, whether people best remember negative behaviors of group members that have been dispositionally attributed and positive behaviors that have been situationally attributed. Experiment 1 established a baseline, showing that behaviors that were not associated with attributions displayed an incongruity effect in which behaviors incongruent with prior expectancies were better recalled than were behaviors congruent with prior expectancies. In Experiment 2, attributions were associated with the behaviors used in Experiment 1, resulting in an attenuation of the incongruity effect and the emergence of a strong misanthropy effect. Experiment 3 indicated that misanthropic memory is only found for outgroups and not for ingroups. The implications of the findings for intergroup perception were discussed.

An integrated threat theory composed of four variables was used to predict attitudes toward immigrant groups in Spain and Israel. The four threats are symbolic threats based on value differences between groups; realistic threats to the power, resources, and well-being of the in-group; anxiety concerning social interaction with out-group members; and feelings of threat arising from negative stereotypes of the out-group. All four threats were significant predictors of attitudes toward one or more of the immigrant groups. It was predicted, and found, that intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes were more powerful and consistent predictors of prejudicial attitudes toward immigrants than were realistic threats or symbolic threats. The implications of the theory for the causes and reduction of prejudice were discussed., Immigration has shaped the world in which we live. Throughout history, people have migrated from one part of the world to another, populating the earth and eventually creating the nation [...]

This study examined cultural differences in preferences for conflict resolution styles using the dual-concern model. It was found that students in a collectivistic culture (Mexico) preferred conflict resolution styles that [...]

Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the accessibility of the private self and the collective self affects the relative weights given to attitudes and subjective norms when forming a behavioral intention. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that increasing the accessibility of the private self caused participants to place more weight on attitudes than subjective norms but that increasing the accessibility of the collective self caused participants to place more weight on subjective norms than on attitudes. Experiments 2 and 3, using a subtle priming procedure, replicated this pattern of results. In addition, the findings of Experiment 3 provided direct evidence for the differential priming of the two self-concepts. Hence, the data suggest an intimate connection between the accessibility of the private and collective selves and whether people use attitudes or subjective norms to make behavioral intentions., As psychologists, one of our most central concerns is understanding the determinants of behavior. Fishbein (1967, 1980) has argued that the proximal determinants of reasoned behavior are attitudes and subjective [...]

This research examined the role that the removal of the need or ability to self-enhance can play in the misanthropic processing of attributed behavioral information (i.e., remembering best negative, internally attributed behaviors and positive externally attributed behaviors). Experiment 1 demonstrated that removing a person's need to self-enhance by increasing his or her self-esteem eliminated misanthropic memory, whereas misanthropy was preserved for control participants and perceivers who had experienced a decrease in self-esteem. Furthermore, controlling for participants' self-evaluations eliminated the memory pattern differences between the two experimental conditions. Experiment 2 demonstrated that canceling the ability to self-enhance by having perceivers form an impression of themselves eliminated the misanthropy effect. However, the misanthropy effect was replicated when perceivers learned about an unknown other. The results were discussed with regard to the situations and factors that can increase or reduce the need to self-enhance and their implications for social information processing.