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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

The effect of realistic threat on social dominance orientation (SDO) was tested. It was observed that realistic threat does increase SDO for highly-identified group members.

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

Two studies examined people's beliefs about the relative disconfirmability of out-group and in-group stereotypes. In Study 1 (n = 56), Hispanics and White non-Hispanics judged the in-group and out-group stereotypes in terms of the ease with which they could be disconfirmed. The results indicated that strongly, ethnically identified participants believed the out-group stereotype to be more difficult to disconfirm than the in-group stereotype. The second study with 73 White participants examined their beliefs about the disconfirmability of the White and African American stereotypes. The results indicated that participants higher in prejudice believed the African American stereotype is more difficult to disconfirm than the White stereotype to a greater degree than participants lower in prejudice. The results suggest that disconfirmability beliefs comprise a distinct construct that may contribute to the difficulty of changing out-group stereotypes.

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.

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.

People bring to bear on their understanding of others' behaviors naive theories of the causes of valenced behaviors. Generally, positive behaviors are understood to be caused by social demands, whereas negative behaviors are understood to be caused by people's dispositions. Various research findings are reviewed in support of the idea that people possess such naive theories. The analysis is extended to establish how these sense-making tendencies affect the manner in which people approach and process information about others. A second set of studies is reviewed in support of these implications for person perception. Comparisons to other models of social inference are considered, implications of the framework are examined, and the framework is situated within a general model of the attribution process.

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.

In the present study, 4 variables (realistic threats, symbolic threats, intergroup anxiety, and negative stereotypes) were used to predict prejudice toward immigrants from Cuba, Mexico, and Asia in samples of students from states in the United States that are affected by immigration from these areas (Florida, New Mexico, and Hawaii, respectively). All 4 variables were significant (or marginally significant) predictors of attitudes toward these immigrant groups. Evidence is presented that the predictor variables are conceptually and empirically distinct. However; these variables do appear to be tied together by an underlying theme: They all concern threats to the in-group or its members. Some of the implications of the results for intergroup relations are discussed.

The certainty engendered by expectancies and the degree to which relevant information is subsequently processed should differ depending on the expectancy's favorability. Consistent with this proposal, the results of Experiment 1 indicated that favorable expectancies elicited more testing of the expectancy than did unfavorable expectancies and engendered greater memory performance overall. In Experiment 2 these findings were replicated, and results also showed that unfavorable expectancies led to attentional decrements in impression formation whereas favorable expectancies did not. In experiment 3 comparable results were obtained using information (traits) that has been shown to induce confirmatory processing. Also, participants indicated that they were more cognitively engaged with the impression task when they held favorable rather than unfavorable expectancies. Finally, the findings of Experiment 4 showed that participants who held favorable expectancies did not show primacy effects in judgement, whereas participants who held unfavorable expectancies did.

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 examined memory for behaviors associated with attributional information. A baseline established in Experiment 1, 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.

The selection of resources in highly competitive situations is believed to be influenced by a numerical imbalance in social categorization according to the hypothesis named People counting.

Studies are conducted to verify that the outcome of an affective priming experiment is critically dependent on the frequency of occurrence of the target words used. Results show that low frequency target words result in an affective congruency effect, that is, faster responses following affectively congruent than incongruent primes, and high frequency target words result in a reverse priming effect, that is, faster responses following incongruent than congruent primes.

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 hypothesis that intergroup conflicts are judged more difficult to resolve than intragroup conflicts is tested. It is indicated that the intergroup conflict was judged more difficult to resolve when the dispute had a lower likelihood of resolution while the intragroup conflict was judged more difficult to resolve when the dispute had a higher likelihood of resolution.

Power-primed and neutral perceivers faced the task of forming an impression of a target person who was characterized by substantial evaluative inconsistencies and thwarted easy judgment. It was hypothesized that the loss to prediction and control endangered by such a target should have an especially strong impact on powerful perceivers' desire for additional target information.

How the interaction goals of cooperation and competition affected social information processing is examined with the help of experiments. Three types of studies were undertaken among which the results from study 2 was validated and the findings were discussed in terms of their implications for interpersonal and intergroup perception.

How the interaction goals of cooperation and competition affected social information processing is examined with the help of experiments. Three types of studies were undertaken among which the results from study 2 was validated and the findings were discussed in terms of their implications for interpersonal and intergroup perception.

The psychological processes underlying the revision of evaluative person impressions were examined by conducting three experiments. These observations had consequences for the impression change and the degree to which people were able to retrieve the evidential basis of their impressions.

Two studies provide evidence that Latins (i.e., Mexicans and Mexican Americans) are guided by a concern with socioemotional aspects of workplace relations to a far greater degree than are Anglo-Americans. The focus on socioemotional considerations results in Latins having a relatively greater preference for workgroups having a strong interpersonal orientation. Preferred relational style had a far greater impact on preferences for workgroups and judgments about their likely success than did the ethnic composition of the workgroups for both Latins and Anglo-Americans. Evidence that the two groups differ markedly in relational schemas comes from examination of suggestions about how group performance could be improved, judgments about whether a focus on socioemotional concerns necessarily entails a reduction in task focus, and recall for socioemotional aspects of workgroup interactions. Implications for the dynamics of intercultural contact are discussed.

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 [...]

Consistent with the proposal that people rely on implicit causal theories that relate different types of attributions to behaviors that differ in valence, 3 studies showed that in addition to predicting more positive than negative behavior in the target, participants produced an attribution-prediction bias. This bias indicated that persons with a dispositional orientation predicted more negative and less positive behavior from the target than persons with a situational orientation. The authors produced these findings in Studies 1 and 2 by manipulating the perceived characteristic motives of a target (dispositional, situational). In Study 3 the authors used a cultural operationalization of attributional orientations by examining the responses of Western students (dispositionalists) and East Asian students (situationalists). Finally, in support of the underlying mechanism, Study 4 showed that activating dispositional or situational knowledge facilitated the encoding of negative and positive behaviors, respectively.

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.