Mental exercising through simple socializing: social interaction promotes general cognitive functioning.

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.

Encoding under trust and distrust: the spontaneous activation of incongruent cognitions.

Past studies of strategic thinking have shown that the encoding of the message information becomes more complex under distrust. Receivers process the information as if they are trying to protect themselves from being misled by testing alternative potential interpretations. The present study investigates the possibility that when people are mistrustful they spontaneously activate associations that are incongruent with the given message.

Individualism, authoritarianism, and attitudes toward assisted death: cross-cultural, cross-regional, and experimental evidence.

We hypothesized that in individualistic cultures, individualism predicts positive attitudes toward assisted death, whereas authoritarianism is negatively associated with favorable views of this issue. Study 1 confirmed this hypothesis in a Polish sample (n=100). Study 2, using a German sample (n=102), found the predicted relationships for forms of assisted death that involved the individual self-determination of a terminally ill patient.