Basically, the stronger the emotional arousal after a learning event, positive or negative, can greatly enhance the memory's recall in the future.

According to the self-efficacy theory, diminishing emotional arousal can reduce avoidance behavior.

The brain, he says, is built to ensure that important moments are remembered, their significance determined by the degree of emotional arousal they cause.

The cumulative effect on these young people, he added, is "a physiological, if not emotional arousal to anger."

These findings add considerable weight to the claims that emotional arousal is of causal significance to relapse.

The person will have a high level of emotional arousal and be particularly sensitive to social influences which can affect arousal.

It has also been found that emotional arousal can extend to subsequent questions or information being recalled even if they are not emotionally arousing themselves.

As a result, this theory holds, people are driven to raise or lower their emotional arousal to optimal levels.

In the first condition, rats were stressed by shock or restraint, causing a high emotional arousal.

Finally they found that event memory is positively correlated with level of emotional arousal and shows significant decline with time.