Mem Cogn (2011) 39:1033–1041 words than did participants in the elderly person stereo- type condition (p < .05). All other posthoc comparisons failed to reach conventional levels of significance. For false recall, we looked at recalled words that were not part of the presented words. Results yielded a marginally significant effect of condition, F(3, 116) = 2.56, p = .06, ŋp2 = .06, with the moving group reporting more intrusions than did the professor stereotype group (see Table 1). When we conducted an analysis on the relevance ratings, we found a significant effect of condition, F(3, 104) = 7.73, p < .001, ŋp2 = .18, with the survival group providing higher ratings than did the moving group (p < .001; see Table 1). The other comparisons were not significant. To investigate whether the relevance ratings affected the survival recall advantage, we entered these ratings as covariate and performed an ANCOVA on correct recall data. The effect of condi- tion was still present in the ANCOVA, F(3, 103) = 15.73, p < .001, ŋp2 = .31. In sum, Experiment 1 showed that stereotype activation can influence memory: Participants in the professor condition recalled significantly more words than did those in the elderly person condition. Still, when the survival condition was contrasted withthe other conditions, the survival recall advantage persisted. Of course, one could argue that this finding does not exclude the possibility that the survival recall advantage is driven by a strong survival-related stereotype being activated during survival processing. To tackle this issue, we conducted Experiment 2. Experiment 2 The purpose of Experiment 2 was to test whether the survival condition is driven by a strong survival stereotype. Specifically, our interest was whether the memory effects of the standard survival instruction would be similar to those of a stereotypical description of a person who is fit enough to survive. To this end, we compared performance of participants in the standard survival group withthat of participants who had to imagine being a person who was mentally and physically strong enough to survive. Table 1 Mean number of intrusions(with standard deviations,in parentheses) of false recall and word ratings Survival Professor Elderly person Moving False Recall 0.36 (0.72) 0.07 (0.25) 0.43 (0.90) 0.60 (0.97) Word Ratings 2.88 (0.37) 2.65 (0.73) 2.87 (0.44) 2.30 (0.43) 1037 Method Participants Seventy-seven undergraduates (Mage = 21.61 years, SD = 3.83; 26 men) participated for course credit. They were tested in individual sessions that lasted for approximately 30 min. Materials The same stimulus materials were used as in Experiment 1. Design and procedure The present experiment used a between-subjects design, with groups differing as a func- tion of condition (survival[n = 26], survival-stereotype [n = 25], and moving[n = 26]). Participants were randomly allocated to one of the three scenarios. The survival and moving instructions were identical to the ones used in Experiment 1. The survival-stereotype instruction was based on our pilot study,where we asked participants what characteristics they thought of when they read the standard survival instruction. Specifically, we selected traits that were most frequently mentioned by participants (i.e., healthy, intelligent,good memory, phy- sically strong, much energy) to develop the following instruction: Survival-stereotype: In this task, we would like you to imagine that you are a person who is physically and mentally strong enough to survive. You have good health, a high intelligence, and an excellent memory. Because of this, you hardly ever get ill, you always have a lot of energy, and you remember everything very well. We are going to show you a list of words, and we would like you to rate how relevant these words would be for you in this situation. Some of the words may be relevant and others not—it’s up to you to decide. Results and discussion Figure 2 presents the mean proportions of correct recall as a function of condition. For correct recall, an ANOVA showed a significant effect of condition, F(2, 74) = 4.21, p < .05, ŋ 2 = .10. Posthoc comparisons yielded significant effects p (survival vs. survival-stereotype, p < .05; survival vs. moving, p < .05), due to the fact that the standard survival group displayed superior retention, as compared with the other two groups. When we analyzed the false recall data, results revealed a marginally significant effect of condition (p = .07), with the survival-stereotype group having higher false recall levels than did the standard survival group (see Table 2). No other comparisons were significant.