No abstract

Unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect, and this phenomenon is referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB). The FAB is moderated and mediated by many variables, including rehearsal and memory specificity, and researchers have emphasized the importance of memory for the FAB, but research has not evaluated the link of the FAB to objective memory measures. Using diary methodology across the span of 1 week, the current study examined the relation of event memory to the FAB for (1) social media events in Experiment 1 (n = 30) and (2) social media and non‐social media events with longer titles in Experiment 2 (n = 63) than in Experiment 1. The FAB was negatively predicted by false memories for (1) social media events in Experiment 1 and (2) both social media and non‐social media events in Experiment 2. These relations were mediated by rehearsals in both experiments. Implications are discussed.

Unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect and this Fading Affect Bias (FAB) phenomenon is positively related to healthy outcomes and negatively related to unhealthy outcomes, which makes the FAB a healthy coping process/reaction. Rehearsal seems to be the cognitive mechanism responsible for the FAB. Although the FAB and its relation to healthy outcomes and rehearsal have been examined in many contexts, they have not been evaluated in the realm of politics. Therefore, we

The Fading Affect Bias (FAB) is the faster fading of unpleasant affect than pleasant affect. Research suggests that the FAB is an indicator of general healthy coping, but it has not shown consistent specific healthy coping via differential relations of the FAB to individual differences across event types. Although previous research did not find specific healthy coping for the FAB across romantic relationship events, these researchers did not include non-relationship control events. Therefore, we examined the relation of the FAB to various relationship variables across romantic relationship events and non-relationship control events. We found general healthy coping in the form of robust FAB effects across both event types and expected relations between relationship variables and the FAB. We also found three significant three-way interactions with the FAB showing specific healthy coping for partner-esteem, which is novel for the FAB. Rehearsal ratings mediated all the three-way interactions.