The Fading Affect Bias

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.

Mental Time Travel as Self-Affirmation

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT

This article integrates and advances the scope of research on the role of mental time travel in bolstering the self. We propose that imagining the self in the future (prospection) or in the past (retrospection) highlights central and positive self-aspects. Thus, bringing to mind one's future or past broadens the perceived bases of self-integrity and offers a route to self-affirmation. In reviewing corresponding research programs on self-prospection and nostalgia, we illustrate that mental time travel serves to affirm the self in terms of self-esteem, coherence, and control. Mental time travel could be implemented as a source of self-affirmation for facilitating coping and behavior change in several domains such as relationships, health, education, and organizational contexts.

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

People can mentally travel to their future or to their past. When people imagine what they will be like in the future, or what they were like in the past, they tend to think about themselves in terms of the important and positive attributes that they possess. Thinking about themselves in such an affirming way expands and consolidates their self-views. This broader image of themselves can increase self-esteem (the extent to which one likes who they are), coherence (the extent to which one perceives life as meaningful), and control (the extent to which one feels capable of initiating and pursuing goals or effecting desirable outcomes). Mental time travel, then, has favorable or affirming consequences for one's self-views. These consequences can be harnessed to modify one's behavior in such life domains as relationships, health, education, and work.

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.

Identity Processes and Psychological Wellbeing Upon Recall of a Significant "Coming Out" Experience in Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual People

This study focuses on the relations between minority stressors, protective factors and psychological wellbeing among lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people. Experimental data based on a sample of 156 showed that participants asked to recall a negative coming out experience to somebody significant reported more identity threat and distress and less positive affect compared to those recalling a neutral coming out experience. In the negative recall condition, the effects of the stressors of discrimination and rejection on the variance of distress through the mediation of identity threat were statistically significant but not in the neutral recall condition and the two conditions statistically significantly differed in regards to the relationship between discrimination and distress. Identity resilience-continuity was associated with less identity threat and distress in the negative recall condition only, while social support was negatively associated and LGB stigma sensitivity was positively associated with distress in both conditions. Degree of outness (operating as a coping strategy) was associated with increased positive affect in both the neutral and negative recall conditions. When recalling a negative coming out experience, LGB people may be more susceptible to distress associated with minority stressors but also capitalize on available coping strategies.

The illusion of moral decline

Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining^1,2. In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people's reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Finally, we show how a simple mechanism based on two well-established psychological phenomena (biased exposure to information and biased memory for information) can produce an illusion of moral decline, and we report studies that confirm two of its predictions about the circumstances under which the perception of moral decline is attenuated, eliminated or reversed (that is, when respondents are asked about the morality of people they know well or people who lived before the respondent was born). Together, our studies show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced. This illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources³, the underuse of social support⁴ and social influence⁵.

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.

Psychological wellbeing, memories, and future thoughts during the Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic led countries to place restrictions on the general public in order to protect their safety. These restrictions, however, may have negative psychological consequences as people are restricted in their social and leisure activities and facing daily life stressors. Investigating the relationship between how people are remembering pandemic events and thinking about their futures is important in order to begin to examine the psychological consequences - cognitive and emotional - of the Covid-19 pandemic. The present study examined how characteristics of past and future thinking relate to psychological wellbeing during the Covid-19 pandemic. In an online questionnaire study, 904 participants in Germany and the USA recalled and predicted negative and positive events related to the pandemic. Participants completed a series of questionnaires measuring cognitions and psychological symptoms. Participants' current psychological wellbeing related to how they remembered events and thought of their future. Participants reported a greater sense of reliving for past compared to future events. However, future events were more rehearsed than past events. Additionally, the emotional impact of positive and negative events differed for the past and the future. Participants seem to be strongly future oriented during the Covid-19 pandemic, but have a negative view of future events.

Fighting Social Isolation With Nostalgia: Nostalgia as a Resource for Feeling Connected and Appreciated and Instilling Optimism and Vitality During the COVID-19 Pandemic

In two experiments, we tested the influence of bringing to mind a memory of a special moment versus an ordinary moment on nostalgia and whether this elicited nostalgia was related directly to gratitude and the satisfaction of need for relatedness and indirectly to optimism and vitality. Participants from Mexico were first asked to state how the pandemic of COVID-19 has affected their lives. After, participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Memory of special moment versus memory of ordinary recent moment (study 1) or memory of special moment versus or memory of ordinary moment from the same life period as the special moment (study 2). After, participants completed a battery of questionnaires assessing nostalgia, gratitude and optimism (study 1) or nostalgia, satisfaction of need for relatedness, and vitality (study 2). Results from study 1 showed a positive influence of bringing to mind a special moment on nostalgia. Nostalgia was positively related to gratitude, which was then related positively to optimism. Similarly, results from study 2 showed a positive influence of bringing to mind a special moment on nostalgia. Nostalgia was positively related to satisfaction of need for relatedness, which then had a positive relationship with vitality. In both studies, the indirect sequential effect of bringing to mind a special moment on optimism and vitality was significant.

Fading Affect Bias in Intergroup Relations

Abstract. Negative affect associated with autobiographical events fades faster over time than positive affect. This Fading Affect Bias (FAB) has been established in the individual and interpersonal domains. Two studies tested the FAB in intergroup relations with Muslims ( N= 76 White British non-Muslim) and opposite gender ( N = 242 women and men) as target outgroups. The results indicated that the FAB exists in an intergroup context, for both ingroup and outgroup memories. Mediation analyses showed that intergroup contact is related to a lower fading of positive affect associated with the outgroup memory, through greater memory strength and a more positive outgroup member evaluation. The findings are important for understanding affect associated with intergroup memories and the buffering effect of positive contact.

Rehearsal and Event Age Predict the Fading Affect Bias across Young Adults and Elderly in Self-Defining and Everyday Autobiographical Memories

The faster fading of unpleasant affect than pleasant affect is known as the Fading Affect Bias (FAB). The FAB generalizes across cultures and event types, it is positively related to rehearsals and healthy outcomes, and it is negatively related to unhealthy outcomes. Experiment 1 Objective, Sample/Population, and Method: We examined the importance of different rehearsal types for the FAB across self-defining and everyday events in 58 college age participants using a self-guided questionnaire procedure in Experiment 1. Experiment 1 Results: We found robust FAB effects across event types, FAB increased with both event age and event sharing (number of people), and rehearsals mediated these relations. Moreover, event sharing and talking about the event combined to predict the FAB. Experiment 2 Objective, Sample/Population, and Method: In Experiment 2, we used the self-guided questionnaire procedure from Experiment 1 for 31 college students and 12 elderly participants 68 to 84 years old, as well as an interview procedure with 13 elderly participants 68 to 94 years old. Experiment 2 Results: We combined the elderly data because both groups showed similar FAB patterns. We found robust FAB effects across both event types, the FAB increased with event age and participant age, and it increased with talking rehearsals. Conclusions: The results extend the FAB to self-defining events and the elderly, they emphasize the importance of various rehearsal types, and they are in line with FAB research, age research, and research on several emotion regulation models.

Attitudes Based on Feelings: Fixed or Fleeting?

Researchers and practitioners want to create opinions that stick. Yet whereas some opinions stay fixed, others are as fleeting as the time it takes to report them. In seven longitudinal studies with more than 20,000 individuals, we found that attitudes based more on emotion are relatively fixed. Whether participants evaluated brand-new Christmas gifts or one of 40 brands, the more emotional their opinion, the less it changed over time, particularly if it was positive. In a word-of-mouth linguistic analysis of 75,000 real-world online reviews, we found that the more emotional consumers are in their first review, the more that attitude persists when they express it again even years later. Finally, more emotion-evoking persuasive messages create attitudes that decay less over time, further establishing emotion’s causal effect. These effects persist above and beyond other attitude-strength attributes. Interestingly, we also found that lay individuals generally fail to appreciate the relation between emotionality and attitude stability.

Is the Future Bright or Bleak? Assessing Past and Future Outlooks Across the Adult Lifespan

An individual's outlook on society can change over time and can be related to both their physical and mental health. Here, we developed an instrument to measure outlooks on the past and future in relation to the present in 413 adults ranging in age from 18 to 80 years. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted on independent samples and test-retest reliability was assessed in a subset of participants. Construct validity of the two past and future scales was assessed by relating them to 1) pre-existing scales measuring related constructs, and 2) beliefs and safety behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic. The final Bright or Bleak Scale (BOBS) consists of a past and future scale, each with two factors measuring societal and personal outlooks. Brighter future societal and personal outlooks were positively associated with longer future time perspectives, while self-reporting a higher likelihood of already having contracted COVID-19 was related to bleaker past societal and personal outlooks.

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.

ArkaeVision VR Game: User Experience Research between Real and Virtual Paestum

The design of a virtual reality (VR) cultural application is aimed at supporting the steps of the learning process-like concrete experimentation, reflection and abstraction—which are generally difficult to induce when looking at ruins and artifacts that bring back to the past. With the use of virtual technologies (e.g., holographic surfaces, head-mounted displays, motion—cation sensors) those steps are surely supported thanks to the immersiveness and natural interaction granted by such devices. VR can indeed help to symbolically recreate the context of life of cultural objects, presenting them in their original place of belonging, while they were used for example, increasing awareness and understanding of history. The ArkaeVision VR application takes advantages of storytelling and user experience design to tell the story of artifacts and sites of an important cultural heritage site of Italy, Paestum, creating a dramaturgy around them and relying upon historical and artistic content revised by experts. Visitors will virtually travel into the temple dedicated to Hera II of Paestum, in the first half of the fifth century BC, wearing an immersive viewer–HTC Vive; here, they will interact with the priestess Ariadne, a digital actor, who will guide them on a virtual tour presenting the beliefs, the values and habits of an ancient population of the Magna Graecia city. In the immersive VR application, the memory is indeed influenced by the visitors’ ability to proceed with the exploratory activity. Two evaluation sessions were planned and conducted to understand the effectiveness of the immersive experience, usability of the virtual device and the learnability of the digital storytelling. Results revealed that certainly the realism of the virtual reconstructions, the atmosphere and the “sense of the past” that pervades the whole VR cultural experience, characterize the positive feedback of visitors, their emotional engagement and their interest to proceed with the exploration.

Shared social identification in mass gatherings lowers health risk perceptions via lowered disgust

Previous research concerning mass gathering‐associated health risks has focused on physical factors while largely neglecting the role of psychological factors. The present research examined the effect of experiencing shared social identification on perceptions of susceptibility to health risks in mass gatherings. Participants in Study 1 were asked to either recall a crowd in which they shared a social identity with other crowd members or a crowd in which they did not. Participants subsequently completed measures assessing shared social identity, disgust, and health risk perceptions. Study 2 involved administering the same measures as part of a survey to participants who had recently attended a music festival. The results from both studies indicated that sharing a social identity lowered health risk perceptions; this effect was indirect and mediated via disgust. This highlights the importance of considering social identity processes in the design of health communication aimed at reducing mass gathering‐associated health risks.

Bad Is Stronger Than Good for Stigmatized, but Not Admired Outgroups: Meta-Analytical Tests of Intergroup Valence Asymmetry in Individual-to-Group Generalization Experiments

Theories of risk aversion, epistemic defense, and ingroup enhancement converge in predicting greater impact of negative (vs. positive) experiences with outgroup members on generalized evaluations of stigmatized outgroups. However, they diverge in predictions for admired outgroups. Past tests have focused on negative outgroups using correlational designs without a control group. Consequently, they have not distinguished between alternative explanations or ascertained the direction of causality/generalization, and they have suffered from self-selection biases. These limitations were redressed by a meta-analysis of experimental research on individual-to-group generalization with positive and negative outgroups (59 tests; 3,012 participants). Controlling for modest confounds, the meta-analysis found a generalization advantage of negative experiences for stigmatized outgroups and a generalization advantage of positive experiences for admired outgroups. These results highlight the centrality of valenced expectations about outgroups, consistent with epistemic defense and ingroup enhancement and inconsistent with risk aversion. Implications for positive changes in intergroup dynamics are discussed.

Emotional distress and positive and negative memories from military deployment: the influence of PTSD symptoms and time

During military deployment, soldiers are confronted with both negative and positive events. What is remembered and how it affects an individual is influenced by not only the perceived emotion of the event, but also the emotional state of the individual. Here we examined the most negative and most positive deployment memories from a company of 337 soldiers who were deployed together to Afghanistan. We examined how the level of emotional distress of the soldiers and the valence of the memory were related to the emotional intensity, experience of reliving, rehearsal and coherence of the memories, and how the perceived impact of these memories changed over time. We found that soldiers with higher levels of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms were more affected by both their negative and positive memories, compared with soldiers with lower levels of PTSD symptoms. Emotional intensity of the most negative memory increased over time in the group with highest levels of PTSD symptoms, but dropped in the other groups. The present study adds to the literature on emotion and autobiographical memory and how this relationship interacts with an individual's present level of emotional distress and the passage of time.