events that evoke strong emotions when they occur are sometimes associated with vivid, detailed, and compelling memories. many l
aypersons believe that heightened emotional arousal leads to the formation of durable, accurate memories of the event, as well as the details surrounding how the news was received. an important question concerns whether memories of events associated with high levels of emotional arousal are qualitatively different from memories for ordinary events, which can be difficult to remember unless the event was special. researchers have studied the relationship between the vividness of emotional memories and their accuracy. in study 1, participants’ memories of a famous political assassination attempt were assessed twice, one month and seven months after the event. many participants’ reports included details about where they were, what they were doing, who brought the news, how they and others felt, and what happened afterward. strong emotional reactions to the event were associated with detailed reports that were consistent over time. in study 2, participants described how they had heard about a disaster one day after it had occurred. they answered specific questions about key details. two-and-a-half years later, the memories of nearly half of those participants were reassessed. each participant’s second account was compared with his or her first account. consistency across the two reports was used as a measure of accuracy. although participants expressed confidence in the accuracy of their second accounts, there were many discrepancies. only three participants provided the same account on both occasions, and 25% were wrong about every key detail. half of the participants got one key detail right (for example, who told them), while getting all the others wrong. in addition to omission errors, such as failing to report something that was said, many of the errors were intrusions, such as a detail that was consistent with the situation but missing from the initial report. not all emotional memories involve learning about momentous, newsworthy events. in study 3, participants who viewed a sequence of slides involving a violent car accident remembered more central aspects of the event (for example, a car involved in the accident) and fewer peripheral details (for example, the street). adapted from e. a. kensinger, "remembering the details: effects of emotion." ©2009 sage publications and the international society for research on emotion; u. neisser and n. harsch, "affect and accuracy in recall." ©1996 cambridge university press. question the finding from study 3 regarding the differential effect of emotional arousal on memory for central and peripheral details is best explained by which mechanism? increasing emotional arousal:
