The Survival Processing Effect Through the Lens of Evolution and Self-Reference

In this study, the survival processing effect was investigated. This effect is that humans remember words and objects related to survival better than other words and objects. All subjects were shown a video from a first-person perspective of walking through a wilderness area, and encountering objects which they rated for survival relevance. In one condition, participants were told to imagine that they were a chimpanzee attempting to survive in their habitat. In the other condition, they were told they were attempting to survive in the wild as themselves. Afterwards, participants were tested on how many objects they recalled. I hypothesized that in the condition involving participants imaging themselves as a Chimpanzee, significantly more words would be recalled because participants’ episodic memory systems may have evolved when they were hominids resembling chimpanzees. Results showed that significantly more words were recalled in the self-reference condition.