St. Peter, Krystal S.

Individuals are constantly being exposed to new information and new situations, but memory for these events is not always equal; understanding the factors that affect an individual’s ability to remember the details surrounding these events is extremely important. The purpose of the current study was to examine the potential effects of emotion and source characteristics, such as age and gender, on memory for factual information (i.e., trivia facts) and source identity (i.e., the sources of the information). One hundred and twenty-eight undergraduate students viewed a total of 120 videos depicting eight different sources (two young adult males, two young adult females, two older adult males, and two older adult females) presenting neutral and emotional (positive, negative) trivia facts; participants were then asked to complete a fill-in-thevi blank test on memory for trivia facts and a multiple-choice test on memory for the source of each fact. Results indicated that positively valenced trivia facts were remembered more often than both neutral and negatively valenced facts; emotion was not found to affect memory for the sources of trivia facts or memory for the relationship between trivia fact and source. Results indicated that trivia facts presented by female sources were remembered better than facts presented by male sources; source gender also affected memory for the sources of each fact, such that sources of facts presented by females were remembered better than the source identity for a fact presented by a male source. When the identity of the source was forgotten, participants were more likely to falsely attribute the fact to someone of the same age as the original source. If the original source was female, participants were also more likely to falsely attribute that fact to another female source compared to a male source, but if the original source was male, participants were equally likely to misattribute the source of either gender. The findings from the current study add to the current understanding of the complex effects of emotion on memory and suggest the importance

Appraisal theory posits that the addition of new, relevant, information can alter the outcome of the appraisal process for a given emotional elicitor, such as an animal. The current study aimed to explore whether the addition of animal movement would sufficiently influence the intensity of emotional reactions and action motivation ratings for animals. The current study compared self-reported emotional reactions and self-reported action motivations for still images and videos for six animal categories (snakes, spiders, cockroaches, tortoises, deer, and ducks). Our findings indicate that movement increases the intensity of relevant emotional reactions to cockroaches, tortoises, deer, and ducks, but not snakes or spiders. Action motivation ratings indicate that movement increases approach motivations for the positively associated animals but does not alter avoidance motivations for the negatively associated animals. The implications for our understanding of the perception of and reactions to animals are discussed.