Event self-importance, event rehearsal, and the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory

Abstract

Prior research suggests that the negative affect associated with autobiographical memories fades faster across time than the positive affect associated with such memories (i.e., the fading affect bias, FAB). Data described in the present article reveal several moderators of this bias. The FAB is small when events are perceived to be self-important, psychologically open, or self-caused; it is large when events are perceived to be atypical of a person's life. The data also suggest that the FAB is especially large when events are rehearsed in the course of conveying events to others, or when events are being privately savored or solved; this effect does not emerge for various other forms of private rehearsal. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed.

Notes

1. Some may question the extent to which this prediction accurately reflects the self-protection/enhancement view. However, in an e-mail exchange Constantine Sedikides indicated that, in his view, the prediction correctly reflects the position.

2. One might question whether the two self ratings were strongly related enough to combine them into an index. We conducted an additional set of analyses in which self-defining and self-important event ratings were kept as separate predictors. The results of such analyses suggested significant overlap in the variance predicted by these two ratings, with little independent predictive utility from each. Moreover, no new insights derived from these analyses. Hence, for the sake of simplicity, we opted to report analyses containing the self-importance index.

3. We are currently preparing a manuscript centering on autobiographical memory rehearsal types, where we will provide factor loadings, correlations, and proportion of variance accounted for by each factor. To conserve space, we chose to not include these tables with our current manuscript. Contact the first author to request a copy of the factor analysis results.

4. Additional sets of analyses were conducted using both difference scores for each event. One of the potential advantages of separate measurement of positive affect and negative affect for each event is that one can see if events characterized by affective ambivalence (i.e., are high in both positive and negative affect) have unique relations to the FAB. However, the results of such analyses yielded no effects that were not captured by the simpler analyses that we report.

5. We supplemented these analyses with additional, simpler analyses that examined each of these same interaction effects controlling only for the main effects of the variables contributing to the interaction being analyzed. Comparing the results of these two sets of analyses can potentially yield more information about the nature of the significant effects obtained than can be independently derived from either analysis type alone (see Cohen & Cohen, 1983). However, the results of these simpler analyses generally did not add to or qualify the results of the full simultaneous regression analyses. Hence, for simplicity's sake, we report only the results of the full analyses. Results for all regression analyses are available from the first and second authors upon request.

6. We thank the action editor on this paper, Bettina Hannover, and the anonymous reviewers of this paper for prodding us to think about our results in this way.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Timothy D. Ritchie

Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a National Institute of Health grant (1-R15-MH063724 – 1A1) given to John J. Skowronski. We thank Leslie Bethencourt and Amy Martin for their assistance in coding some of the data contained in this article.