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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.

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.

Objective: Social relationships supply purpose to life. How can socially disconnected people, who show lower levels of purpose, compensate for purpose in life? We propose that religious beliefs can compensate for the purpose in life that social relationships would otherwise provide, through providing (a) greater purpose to turn to and (b) divine figures that can substitute for social relationships.Method: In three studies, we analyze three nationally representative and longitudinal data sets (N = 19,775) using moderated regression and cross-lagged panel analyses.Results: Consistent with our hypotheses, religious beliefs were of minimal influence on purpose in life for socially connected individuals, who already held higher levels of purpose than socially disconnected individuals. However, for socially disconnected individuals, being highly religious predicted higher levels of purpose in life.Conclusions: Results suggest that although people primarily derive purpose from social relationships, socially disconnected individuals may leverage their religious beliefs for purpose and social comfort until they can reconnect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

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 [...]

Personal growth is usually considered an outcome of intrapersonal processes-personal resources residing within the person. Comparatively, little research has examined the interpersonal processes underlying personal growth. We investigated how one interpersonal factor-people's relationships with others-influences personal growth. Study 1 showed that brief reminders of a supportive (vs. nonsupportive) other led people to choose a job that promoted personal growth over one that offered a higher salary. Moreover, feelings of self-confidence from thinking about a supportive (vs. nonsupportive) other mediated personal growth. Extending these results, Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that people's perceptions of how supportive their close others are predicted personal growth in two distinct cultures with varying emphasis on individual (vs. collective) growth. Consistent with Study 1's findings, the results were also mediated by feelings of self-confidence. These findings suggest that the link between supportive relationships and personal growth may reflect a general process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, we used a valence classification task to investigate the common and distinct neural basis of the two fundamental dimensions of social cognition (agency and communion) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The results showed that several brain areas associated with mentalizing, along with the inferior parietal gyrus in the mirror system, showed overlap in response to both agentic and communal words. These findings suggest that both content categories are related to the neural basis of social cognition; further, several areas in the default mode network (DMN) showed similar deactivations between agency and communion, reflecting task-induced deactivation (TID). In terms of distinct activations, the findings indicated greater deactivations for communal than agentic content in the ventral anterior cingulate (vACC) and medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC). Communion also showed greater activation in some visual areas compared to agentic content, including occipital gyrus, lingual gyrus, and fusiform gyrus. These activations may reflect greater allocation of attentional resources to visual areas when processing communal content, or inhibition of cognitive activity irrelevant to task performance. If so, this suggests greater attention and engagement with communion-related content. The present research thus suggests common and differential activations for agency- versus communion-related content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have examined the effect of intergroup threat on cognitive outcomes such as memory. Different theoretical perspectives can inform how intergroup threat should affect memory for threat-relevant and neutral information, such as the mood-congruency approach, Yerkes-Dodson law, Easterbrook's theory, and also evolutionary perspectives. To test among these, we conducted two experiments to examine how exposure to intergroup threats affected memory compared to control conditions. In study 1, we manipulated symbolic threat and examined participants' memory for threat and neutral words. In study 2, memory performance was assessed following the induction of realistic threat. Across the studies, in the control condition participants showed better memory for threat-related than neutral information. However, participants under threat remembered neutral information as well as threat-related information. In addition, participants in the threat condition remembered threat-related information as well as participants in the control condition. The findings are discussed in terms of automatic vigilance processes but also the effects of threat on arousal and its effect on information processing. This latter perspective, suggests paradoxically, that under some circumstances involving an outgroup threat, non-threatening information about outgroups can be extensively processed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]