Prospective Person Memory: The Role of Self-Efficacy, Personal Interaction, and Multiple Images in Recognition of Wanted Persons

Prospective person memory refers to recognition of individuals one has been asked to be on the lookout for, such as wanted criminals or missing persons. Past field experiments have tended to find very low rates of identification. The present experiments examine whether multiple pictures, personal interaction, and increased self-efficacy would improve prospective person memory. Participants viewed a mock wanted person alert and were told that if they saw the person depicted in the alert they could win a cash prize. The alert either showed a single picture of the target person or multiple pictures. The target individual then showed up at the dining hall participants routinely had lunch. Some participants had peronal interaction with the target and some participants were led to believe that the likelihood of encounter was quite high. Despite these manipulations, only a small number of participants reported seeing the target individual.