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Prior studies on the association between weather and psychological changes have produced mixed results. In part, this inconsistency may be because weather's psychological effects are moderated by two important factors: the season and time spent outside. In two correlational studies and an experiment manipulating participants' time outdoors (total N = 605), pleasant weather (higher temperature or barometric pressure) was related to higher mood, better memory, and "broadened" cognitive style during the spring as time spent outside increased. The same relationships between mood and weather were not observed during other times of year, and indeed hotter weather was associated with lower mood in the summer. These results are consistent with findings on seasonal affective disorder, and suggest that pleasant weather improves mood and broadens cognition in the spring because people have been deprived of such weather during the winter.

The research examined whether age-related cognitive declines affect performance when people form impressions of others. The results from Experiment 1 showed that young and old participants who held positive expectancies about an individual spent more time processing and had better memory for information that was inconsistent rather than consistent with their expectancies. But participants who held negative expectancies tended to focus on information that was consistent rather than inconsistent with their expectancies. In Experiment 2 the task was made more demanding by limiting the amount of time participants had to form their impressions. Under these conditions, older participants who had positive expectations showed deficits in memory for negative information compared with young participants. As expected, both groups performed similarly when they held negative expectancies for the target. The results suggest that although both older and younger adults process social information similarly under self-paced conditions, older adults may be at a disadvantage processing negative information about positively characterized individuals when the context in which impression formation occurs is cognitively demanding.

Family problems, although separate from the work sphere, can impact one’s experience of work even when away from home. We propose that challenges arising from the home and family domain affect individuals’ experience of work because they act as distractions. If so, working memory, an ability relevant to managing distractions, should attenuate the effects that one’s family problems have on experienced job demands. Using a nationally representative dataset (N = 2591) with both concrete measures of family problems and cognitive performance measures, we show that family problems predict experiencing one’s job as more demanding and stressful. However, increasing working memory ability attenuates this relationship. Results suggest that although family problems impinge on one’s work, increased working memory ability to manage distractions may reduce their consequences. We connect our findings and their implications to relevant theoretical frameworks that inform the linkage between family and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three experiments examined memory for behaviors associated with attributional information. A baseline established in Experiment l, using behaviors unaccompanied by attributions, indicated that expectancy-inconsistent behaviors were better recalled than consistent ones. Experiment 2 linked these same behaviors to dispositional or situational attributions. After reconceptualizing the results, it was shown that negative dispositionally attributed behaviors and positive situationally attributed behaviors were best recalled, suggesting that there is a negativity bias in person memory for behaviors that are accompanied by attributions. Experiment 3, using a different procedure, served as a replication of this misanthropic memory effect and demonstrated that the effect was only slightly altered by reducing the processing time allocated for this task. The findings were discussed in terms of their implications for expectancy-driven information processing and also with regard to the types of impressions people may form from attributed behavioral information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]