1034 (i.e., pictures; Otgaar et al., 2010) or when the survival scenario was compared with a modern survival situation (i.e., surviving in the city; Nairne & Pandeirada, 2010). Overall, these studies indicate that the survival recall effect is a robust phenomenon. There are a few studies that could not reproduce the survival recall advantage. Klein, Robertson, and Delton (2010), for example, showed that when the survival group was contrasted with a condition in which words were encoded for future planning (i.e., rating words for relevance to planning to take a camping trip in the forest), the survival group did not demonstrate superior memory performance. Instead, recall was highest for the group that processed words for future planning (see also Klein, Robertson, & Delton, 2011). Although Klein and colleagues explained their finding as evidence that memory has adapted to preferentially process information for future times, one could likewise argue that the survival recall advantage is subject to certain boundary conditions. Indeed, in a recent study, Otgaar and Smeets (2010) showed that processing words for their survival relevance not only prioritizes true recollec- tion, but also promotes false recollections in both adults and children (see also Howe & Derbish, 2010). Furthermore, Otgaar and Smeets found that the survival recall advantage disappeared when net accuracy scores were used that took the total output (i.e., true + false recall) into account. Finally, in a study by Butler, Kang, and Roediger (2009), the survival recall effect vanished when type of processing and materials were congruent with each other.When the authors presented participants in the survival condition with survival-related words (e.g., rescue, fire, shelter), no survival recall advan- tage emerged (but see Nairne & Pandeirada, 2011). Collectively, these studies provide evidence that the survival recall advantage operates within certain boundaries. At this point, only a few studies have attempted to investigate the possible causes of the survival-processing advantage. Indeed, Nairne and Pandeirada (2008) argued that “[a]t this point the data say very little about the proximate mechanisms that underlie the survival advantage in memory” (p. 242). A viable candidate for such a proximate mechanism could be stereotype activation, the idea being that survival processing is tied in with the activation of certain stereotypes that could be beneficial to later recall performance. In stereotype activation studies, participants typically have to imagine belonging to a certain stereotype (e.g., a professor; see, e.g., Dijksterhuis & van Knippenberg, 1998), and the instructions used for this are comparable with the survival instruction. Specifically, stereotypes are commonly regarded as schematic knowl- edge structures containing several trait concepts and are known to be able to guide individuals’ behaviors. Bargh, Chen, & Burrows (1996, Experiment 2), for example, showed that participants who were primed with an elderly Mem Cogn (2011) 39:1033–1041 person stereotype walked significantly slower down the corridor when leaving the lab room than did participants who were not primed. Dijksterhuis and van Knippenberg demonstrated in their study that the activation of stereo- types also impacts intellectual performance. They showed that participants who were asked to think of a college professor and write down everything that they considered typical professor characteristics subsequently answered more Trivial Pursuit questions correctly than did no-prime control participants. There is additional evidence that stereotype activation affects memory performance. In a study by Levy (1996), elderly participants were primed with positive (e.g., creative, alert, wise) or negative (e.g., decline, senile, dementia) words related to the elderly. Next, they were provided with several memory tasks. As was expected, participants demon- strated improved memory performance when confronted with positive words and showed deteriorated performance when they received negative words. Furthermore, Levy showed that this effect could not be explained by mood differences. This result was replicated by Hess, Hinson, and Statham (2004), who also found that memory performance deteriorated when participants were primed with negative stimuli. In a related study, Dijksterhuis, Aarts, Bargh, and van Knippenberg (2000) demonstrated that after being primed with an elderly person stereotype, memory performance was poor for participants who indicated having a lot of contact with the elderly, as compared with participants who reported having little contact with the elderly. Furthermore, Van Knippenberg, Dijksterhuis, and Vermeulen (1999) found that stereotype activation affects memory for a criminal act. In their study, a negative (i.e., hard drug addict) or positive (i.e., respectable bank employee) stereotype was activated. Then participants received information about a crime (i.e., breaking into a private home and stealing various items) in either a low processing load (i.e., self-pacing) or a high processing load (i.e., information was presented very quickly). Finally, they were tested for their memory of this criminal action. The authors found that under high load, a negative stereotype resulted in a better memory for incriminating evidence than when a positive stereotype was activated. Altogether, these findings clearly demonstrate that stereotype activation can impact behavior (e.g., motor behavior) and, more important for our study, even memory performance. In the present study, our hypothesis was that the survival recall advantage is caused by the survival instruction’s eliciting a strong stereotype of a person who is mentally (e.g., excellent memory, intelligent) and physically (e.g., healthy, muscular) fit to survive. Our hypothesis was that these positive mental and physical connotationslead to superior memory performance. To examine this, we con- ducted a pilot study and two experiments.