Memory for committing a crime: effects of arousal, proximity, and gender

Few researchers have investigated the memories of active participants in an emotionally arousing crime. The present study used a mock crime paradigm to explore participant memories for a low, moderate, or highly arousing event. Forty-seven undergraduate participants committed a "theft" of an exam from a professor's office. Two weeks after the theft, participants completed a cognitive interview, recalled objects from the professor's office, and constructed a map of the route to and from the crime room. Arousal improved reports on a map recall task but no other recall indices. Although there was a general superiority of recall of proximal over distal details, arousal only infrequently interacted with proximity. Some support was found for proximity (spatial-temporal distinction) as a useful proxy for centrality. Future work will benefit from an examination of the overlap between definitions of centrality and proximity with more traditional stimuli.