The affective personality, sleep, and autobiographical memories

Abstract

Patterns of affect, sleep, and autobiographical memories seem related but there are no studies we know of to verify the notion. The purpose of this research is to investigate interrelationships’ between profiles of affect, sleep, and autobiographical memories. A cross-sectional design is employed. Three hundred and thirteen adult students participated. The data generated are viewed from two complementary perspectives. Our cluster analyses identified a group of individual states whose lives appear to be arousing and stressful (high positive and negative affect) yet they slept significantly better than self-destructive states (high on negative affect and low on positive affect). Our regressions imply that negative autobiographical memories are involved in a relationship with sleep independently of fairly stable patterns of affect, biological sex, and age. We finish by noting that apart from investigating these relationships longitudinally, cultural differences in patterns of affect and their health correlates should be explored.

Keywords:

• affect
• autobiographical
• memory
• sleep
• positive psychology

Acknowledgments

Both authors are affiliated with PLUS-Psychological Links of Unique Strengths at the University of Örebro, Sweden. This paper was prepared while we were in residence there and supported by a grant from the Center for Health and Medical Psychology (CHAMP). We also acknowledge support of Camile Arucaj, Ylva Andersson, and Niloufar Jalali-Moghadam for their work with data collection and data entry. We are indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their expert comments and my mother Annie MacDonald for proofreading untold versions of the unfinished manuscript.