Predicting the likelihood and amount of fading, fixed, flourishing, and flexible positive and negative affect of autobiographical memories.

The emotions attributed to an event can change from occurrence to recall. Autobiographical memories (AMs) exhibit fixed affect (i.e., no change in emotionality), fading affect (i.e., a decrease in emotional intensity), flourishing affect (i.e., an increase in emotional intensity), and flexible affect (i.e., change of valence). Mixed-effects multinomial models were used to predict the likelihood of the different affect change categories. Mixed-effects regression models were used to predict the amount of emotional change within each category. Predictors at the event-level were initial intensity, social rehearsal, and recall frequency. Predictors at the participant-level were components of subjective wellbeing. Analyses were based on 1,748 AMs reported by 117 young participants in response to 16 event cues. Frequency biases, and biases in the amount of change across positive and negative emotionality, were found for all types of emotional change. Specifically, there was more fading of negative (29.98%) than positive affect (11.90%), more flourishing of positive (34.27%) than negative affect (9.61%), and more AMs changing from negative to positive valence (13.33%) than vice versa (3.95%). These biases were also evident in the amount of change within the categories. Moreover, slightly more AMs remained fixed in positive (49.89%) than negative affect (47.08%). Both event and participant level predictors were significantly associated with the likelihood of different affect change categories and the amount of emotional change within the categories. The present findings highlight the importance of considering the different ways in which AMs change emotionally from occurrence to later recall.

Time heals all wounds? Naïve theories about the fading of affect associated with autobiographical events.

The current research examined the naïve theories that individuals hold about how affect fades over time. In three studies (with various replications), participants read about positive and negative events and estimated the emotional impact of those events on either themselves or a hypothetical other over different time frames (i.e., 1 week, 1 month, 1 year-Studies 1a-1c) or how long it would take for specific amounts of fade to occur (Studies 2a & 2b). In a final study, participants were directly asked about their beliefs regarding affect fade. Results demonstrated that people have inaccurate expectations about affect fade for positive and negative events. Specifically, participants rate that positive events fade more in the short term, but that negative events fade more in the long term. Results are discussed in terms of how these (incorrect) naïve theories of affect fade relate to metacognitive biases in memory and emotion.

Can perceived changes in autobiographical memories' emotionality be explained by memory characteristics and individual differences?

Recalling autobiographical memories (AMs) is closely tied to emotional experience. However, the emotionality associated with an event can change from occurrence to recall. Autobiographical memories show fixed affect (i.e., no change in emotionality), fading affect (i.e., decrease in emotional intensity), flourishing affect (i.e., increase in emotional intensity), and flexible affect (i.e., change of valence). The present study used mixed-effects multinomial models to predict perceived changes in positive and negative valence as well as intensity. Initial intensity, vividness, and social rehearsal were entered into the models as event level predictor variables, whereas rumination and reflection were entered into the models as participant level predictor variables. Analyses were based on 3950 AMs reported by 352 participants (18-92 years old) in response to 12 emotional cue-words. Participants rated the emotionality of each memory from the perspective of event occurrence and event recall. Only the predictors on the event level meaningfully distinguished between memories that stayed fixed in affect and memories that showed fading, flourishing, or flexible affect (R² values ranging from .24 to .65). The present results highlight the importance of considering different aspects of AMs and the ways they change emotionally to fully understand emotional experiencing in autobiographical memory.

Cannabis-associated impairments in the fading affect bias and autobiographical memory specificity.

We investigated potential relationships between cannabis use and 2 phenomena associated with autobiographical remembering: the fading affect bias (FAB) and memory specificity. The FAB is an emotional affect regulation mechanism that is observed when the intensity of affect associated with experiencing negative memories fades faster than the intensity of affect associated with experiencing positive memories. Memory specificity refers to the level of detail with which events are recalled. No studies have examined the relationships between cannabis use, the FAB, and memory specificity simultaneously. Chronic cannabis users (N = 47) and non-users (N = 52) recalled and described positive and negative autobiographical events and rated the affective intensity for the events at the time of occurrence and at time of test. Participants retrieved additional memories using a sentence-completion recall task, which were coded for specificity. Cannabis users showed reduced fading affect for unpleasant events and reduced memory specificity compared to non-users.

Individuals who report eating disorder symptoms also exhibit a disrupted fading affect bias in autobiographical memory.

We examined symptoms of disordered eating in the context of autobiographical memory via a phenomenon termed the Fading Affect Bias (FAB). The FAB is the tendency for the affect elicited by thinking about positive past events to fade slower than the affect elicited by thinking about negative past events. In Study 1 via an online survey procedure (Event N = 714), and via a booklet laboratory procedure in both Study 2 (Event N = 916) and Study 3 (Event N = 516) each participant described six (Studies 1 & 3) and four (Study 2) autobiographical events. They rated each event's affect at occurrence, affect at recall, and event rehearsal frequency. Participants also reported their own symptoms of eating concerns. Across studies, eating, shape, and weight concerns each moderated the FAB: above-average ratings were associated with a small FAB or no FAB. In all studies, restrictive eating ratings did not moderate the FAB. These results remained while controlling for event rehearsal frequency. The results clarify the relation between subclinical disordered eating and emotion regulation via the FAB during reminiscence about ordinary life events. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of our findings.

An exploration of the relationship among valence, fading affect, rehearsal frequency, and memory vividness for past personal events.

The affect associated with negative (or unpleasant) memories typically tends to fade faster than the affect associated with positive (or pleasant) memories, a phenomenon called the fading affect bias (FAB). We conducted a study to explore the mechanisms related to the FAB. A retrospective recall procedure was used to obtain three self-report measures (memory vividness, rehearsal frequency, affective fading) for both positive events and negative events. Affect for positive events faded less than affect for negative events, and positive events were recalled more vividly than negative events. The perceived vividness of an event (memory vividness) and the extent to which an event has been rehearsed (rehearsal frequency) were explored as possible mediators of the relation between event valence and affect fading. Additional models conceived of affect fading and rehearsal frequency as contributors to a memory's vividness. Results suggested that memory vividness was a plausible mediator of the relation between an event's valence and affect fading. Rehearsal frequency was also a plausible mediator of this relation, but only via its effects on memory vividness. Additional modelling results suggested that affect fading and rehearsal frequency were both plausible mediators of the relation between an event's valence and the event's rated memory vividness.

Individual differences in emotional processing and autobiographical memory: interoceptive awareness and alexithymia in the fading affect bias.

The capacity to perceive internal bodily states is linked to emotional awareness and effective emotional regulation. We explore individual differences in emotional awareness in relation to the fading affect bias (FAB), which refers to the greater dwindling of unpleasant compared to pleasant emotions in autobiographical memory. We consider interoceptive awareness and alexithymia in relation to the FAB, and private event rehearsal as a mediating process. With increasing interoceptive awareness, there was an enhanced FAB, but with increasing alexithymia, there was a decreased FAB. Further, the effects of interoceptive awareness were partially mediated by private rehearsal of pleasant events. We provide novel evidence that capacity for emotional awareness and thus effective processing is an important factor predictive of the FAB. Moreover, our results imply an important role for maintaining positive affect in the FAB. Our findings offer new insights into the effects of interoception and alexithymia on autobiographical memory, and support concepts of the FAB emerging as a result of adaptive emotional regulation processes.

Emotions experienced at event recall and the self: Implications for the regulation of self-esteem, self-continuity and meaningfulness.

The intensity of positive affect elicited by recall of positive events exceeds the intensity of negative affect elicited by recall of negative events (fading affect bias, or FAB). The research described in the present article examined the relation between the FAB and three regulatory goals of the self: esteem, continuity and meaningfulness. The extent to which an event contributed to esteem (Study 1), continuity (Study 2) or meaningfulness (Study 3) was related to positive affect at event recall provoked by positive memories and to negative affect at event recall provoked by negative memories. The relation between affect experienced at recall and the three regulatory goals was bidirectional. The results showcase how individuals use recall for self-regulatory purposes and how they implement self-regulatory goals for positive affect.

The fading affect bias: Effects of social disclosure to an interactive versus non-responsive listener.

The intensity of negative emotions associated with event memories fades to a greater extent over time than positive emotions (fading affect bias or FAB). In this study, we examine how the presence and behaviour of a listener during social disclosure influences the FAB and the linguistic characteristics of event narratives. Participants recalled pleasant and unpleasant events and rated each event for its emotional intensity. Recalled events were then allocated to one of three experimental conditions: no disclosure, private verbal disclosure without a listener or social disclosure to another participant whose behaviour was experimentally manipulated. Participants again rated the emotional intensity of the events immediately after these manipulations and after a one-week delay. Verbal disclosure alone was not sufficient to enhance the FAB. However, social disclosure increased positive emotional intensity, regardless of the behaviour of the listener. Whilst talking to an interactive listener led unpleasant event memories to decrease in emotional intensity, talking to a non-responsive listener increased their negative emotional intensity. Further, listener behaviour influenced the extent of emotional expression in written event narratives. This study provides original evidence that listener behaviour during social disclosure is an important factor in the effects of social disclosure in the FAB.

A pancultural perspective on the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory.

The fading affect bias (FAB) refers to the negative affect associated with autobiographical events fading faster than the positive affect associated with such events, a reliable and valid valence effect established by researchers in the USA. The present study examined the idea that the FAB is a ubiquitous emotion regulating phenomenon in autobiographical memory that is present in people from a variety of cultures. We tested for evidence of the FAB by sampling more than 2400 autobiographical event descriptions from 562 participants in 10 cultures around the world. Using variations on a common method, each sample evidenced a FAB: positive affect faded slower than negative affect did. Results suggest that in tandem with local norms and customs, the FAB may foster recovery from negative life events and promote the retention of the positive emotions, within and outside of the USA. We discuss these findings in the context of Keltner and Haidt's levels of analysis theory of emotion and culture.

Changing the working self alters the emotions prompted by recall.

Results from three studies indicated that emotional responses to memories can be changed by altering the working self. In particular, these results showed that emotional reactions to memories: (1) were especially positive when memories were perceived to be central to the working self (Experiment 1); (2) were muted when the working self was changed by adopting a third-person perspective during recall (Experiment 1); (3) of an event in the life of each participant's mother weakened when an individual was induced to experience a self that felt less close to their mother (Experiment 2) and (4) of a childhood event provoked especially positive emotional reactions after exposure to a mortality salience manipulation that increased perceived self-worth (Experiment 3). The extent to which mother was included in the self (Experiment 2) and self-worth (Experiment 3) plausibly mediated the effects of the manipulations on participants' emotional reactions to recalled events.

In-Person and Online Studies Examining the Influence of Problem Solving on the Fading Affect Bias.

The fading affect bias (FAB) occurs in autobiographical memory when unpleasant emotions fade faster than pleasant emotions and the phenomenon appears to be a form of emotion regulation. As emotion regulation is positively related to problem solving, the current study examined FAB in the context of problem solving. In-person and online studies asked participants to provide basic demographics, describe their problem-solving abilities, and rate various healthy and unhealthy variables, including emotional intelligence and positive problem-solving attitudes. Participants also completed an autobiographical event memory form for which they recalled and described two pleasant and two unpleasant problem-solving and non-problem-solving events and rated the initial and current affect and rehearsals for those events. We found a robust FAB effect that was larger for problem-solving events than for non-problem-solving events in Study 1 but not in Study 2. We also found that FAB was positively related to healthy variables, such as grit, and negatively related to unhealthy variables, such as depression. Moreover, many of these negative relations were inverted at high levels of positive problem-solving attitudes, and these complex interactions were partially mediated by talking rehearsals and thinking rehearsals.

The impact of past temporal discounting on mental health: Opposite effects of positive and negative event aftertastes over time: Aftertaste and time.

Background: Time frees people from bereavement, but also fades childhood happiness, these dynamics can be understood through the framework of past temporal discounting (PTD), which refers to the gradual decrease in affect intensity elicited by recalling positive or negative events over time. Despite its importance, measuring PTD has been challenging, and its impact on real-life outcomes, such as mental health remains unknown. Method: Here, we employed a longitudinal tracking approach to measure PTD in healthy participants (N = 210) across eight time points. We recorded changes in affect intensity for positive and negative events and examined the impact of PTD on mental health outcomes, including general mental well-being, depression, stress sensitivity, and etc. Results: The results of Bayesian multilevel modeling indicated that the affect intensity for positive and negative events discounted over time at a gradually decelerating rate. Furthermore, we found that maintaining good mental health heavily depended on rapid PTD of negative events and slow PTD of positive events. Conclusions: These results provide a comprehensive characterization PTD and demonstrate its importance in maintaining mental health.

Writing to your past-self can make you feel better.

Self-compassionate writing has been shown to be helpful for improving the mental state in some individuals. Here, we investigated how the writer's attitude toward his/her past, present and future and the focus of the writing, i.e., social experience in the past versus self-experience, modulate these effects. In Experiment 1, 150 undergraduates wrote a compassionate letter to their past-self and to their future-self and responded to the Japanese version of the Adolescent Time Inventory-Time Attitudes (ATI-TA) questionnaire. Writing to past-self decreased negative feelings more than writing to future-self. Further, participants who had negative feelings toward their past, present, and future, as assessed by the ATI-TA, were more likely to be emotionally affected by writing a letter to their past-self. In Experiment 2, 31 undergraduates wrote a letter focusing on what they had experienced together with someone, and another 31 undergraduates wrote focusing on what they had experienced alone. Focusing on a social experience was more helpful for recovering from negative feelings than focusing on a self-experience. In conclusion, writing a compassionate letter to one's past-self can improve mood, especially in individuals with a negative time attitude who focus their writing on a social connection.

How Cultural Practices Influence the Understanding and Emotional Intensity of Mexican Children's Memories of Death Events.

This study assessed whether a sample of 43 children in Puebla, Mexico would show the Fading Affect Bias (FAB) for memories of the death of loved ones or pets and for general negative memories. FAB is a phenomenon in which emotional intensity associated with unpleasant memories fades faster than affect in pleasant memories. Mexican children showed FAB across negative and death memories. Younger children showed lower fading for general negative memories when compared to older children. A second aim of this work assessed whether younger (ages 4.83-9) and older (ages 10-13) children in Mexico would show biological and spiritual understanding of death, and findings indicated that Mexican children's understanding included both biological and spiritual subcomponents. Younger children showed lower comprehension of the death subcomponents Inevitability and Irreversibility. Higher depression, anxiety, and social stress scores as measured with the BASC-2 predicted lower FAB, lateralized to negative memories.

The fading affect bias across alcohol consumption frequency for alcohol-related and non-alcohol-related events.

The Fading Affect Bias (FAB) is the tendency for unpleasant emotions to fade more over time than pleasant emotions (Walker, Vogl, & Thompson, 1997). The FAB is negatively related to dysphoria (Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003), which led researchers to suggest that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism that improves the overall positivity of life (Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson, 2003). The FAB may also reinforce certain maladaptive behaviors, such as drinking alcohol, as the unpleasant emotions associated with those behaviors quickly fade from memory, and increase the likelihood of those behaviors in the future. If the FAB increases the likelihood of maladaptive alcohol consumption, the FAB should be greatest for ordinary events at low alcohol consumption levels, whereas the FAB should be greatest for alcohol events at high alcohol consumption levels. The results of two studies provided support for the hypotheses. The implications are discussed.

Holding on & letting go: romantic attachment and fading affect bias.

The current research examined the phenomenon of fading affect bias - the tendency for affect associated with negative events to fade more than affect associated with positive events - within the context of romantic relationships. Participants recalled and evaluated positive and negative relationship-specific and non-relationship autobiographical events. Participants also completed measures of attachment avoidance and anxiety. Multi-level modeling demonstrated fading affect bias for relationship and non-relationship events, but that affect fade was shaped by attachment orientations. Specifically, higher attachment anxiety, and lower attachment avoidance predicted greater importance of relationship events which predicted lower fading of affective intensity of memories. Thus, attachment anxiety sustained, while attachment avoidance suppressed the affect of relational memories. We discuss implications of these findings for relationship maintenance.

Does the Fading Affect Bias Vary by Memory Type and a Parent's Risk of Physically Abusing a Child? A Replication and Extension.

Research described in the present article assessed (a) whether a fading affect bias (FAB) occurred in parent memories of a child as well as parent general personal memories and (b) whether either or both of these FAB effects was moderated by a parent's risk of physically abusing a child. A FAB effect, unmoderated by parents' abuse risk status, emerged for parents' general personal memories. In contrast, the FAB was muted when high abuse risk parents remembered child-related events: High abuse risk parents seemed unable to "let go" of negative affect prompted by recall of negative events involving their children. This finding replicates and extends findings reported in prior research. However, this significant moderation effect occurred for only one event memory collection method. This methodological dependence is unusual: the FAB effect is typically impervious to methodological variations. Implications of these results, as well as suggestions for future research, are discussed.

Remembering the Super-Typhoon: Some, but Not All, Qualities of First-Hand Survivor Memories of Natural Disaster Are Similar to Near Death Experience and Flashbulb Memory Accounts.

The strongest storm in Philippines history, super-typhoon Haiyan, barreled through central Philippines in 2013 and left a high death toll and extensive destruction in its wake. Past studies have investigated Fading Affect Bias (FAB) in extremely negative situations like the death of a loved one and found that the FAB generally occurs in those extreme situations, but this study is the first to assess FAB in first-hand memories for a natural disaster survival situation. The FAB phenomenon is the tendency for emotional intensity associated with negative memories for events to fade over time and emotional intensity for positive events stays relatively stable over time. Researchers collected memories for the super-typhoon from survivors three years after the event. Results showed that negative emotional intensity for the event faded after the event. Emotion in comparison positive memories for non-typhoon events did not fade, and emotion in comparison negative memories faded, following results in several other FAB studies. The Positive and Negative Affect Scale (PANAS) was used as an initial assessment of mood before the study began, and PANAS scores reliably predicted current emotional intensity scores. Memory vividness and emotional intensity in first-hand accounts of a natural disaster experience behave like vividness and intensity in flashbulb memories, but details in first-hand accounts are similar to the amount of details in memories of near-death experiences. How memory rehearsal behaves in relation to time elapsed since event has yet to be captured for first-hand survival experiences.

Reminiscing and the Passage of Years: Investigating the Role of Affective Autobiographical Memories in Passage of Time Judgments.

Previous research has shown that judgments of the experienced velocity of recent years passing by vary depending on the number of autobiographical memories being activated in the moment of judging. While a body of evidence shows affect to have an impact on both prospective and retrospective judgments on the experience of time for short periods, the effect of valence of memories on the experience of the passage of long intervals has not been examined yet. Thus, we asked 282 people to retrieve five either emotionally positive or negative memories from the last 5years before judging the subjectively experienced passage of time of these years. However, positive and negative events differ in some ways beyond valence, e.g., the ascribed impact on the participants' subsequent lives as well as the stability of ascribed affective intensity: The latter decreased over time for negative but not for positive memories while ascribed impact was markedly higher for positive memories. Results indicate no significant differences between the two conditions, even after controlling for the aforementioned differences. However, exploratory analyses show that participants rate time to have passed faster, the longer the activated memories dated back on average, a result that seems in line with contextual-change hypothesis.