The Impact of Exercise-Induced Arousal on the Self-Other Memory Effect

This study explored the relationship between arousal and memory for self-referent versus other-referent adjectives. Subjects worked on the Kuiper and Rogers (1979) adjective rating task under varying levels of arousal. The Kuiper and Rogers task requires subjects to judge whether some adjectives are self-descriptive and whether others describe the experimenter. The general finding is that memory is greater for those adjectives used in the self-rating task. The present study found that this effect interacted with arousal level, such that it was most robust in conditions where subjects' arousal level (i.e., systolic blood pressure and self-report) was above baseline. We interpret these results to be consistent with recent contentions that the self-referent memory effect is mediated by the greater availability of self-schemas (Ganellen & Carver, 1985; kuiper & Rogers, 1979; Markus, Crane, Bernstein, & Siladi, 1982; Rogers, Kuiper, & Kirker, 1977). Moreover, these results indicate that classic motivational factors may have important procedural implications in research using this paradigm.