Autobiographical memory: unpleasantness fades faster than pleasantness over time

Kansas State University, USASUMMARYWe examined the effects of retention intervals on the recollection of the emotional content ofevents. Memory for personal events was tested for three retention intervals: 3 months, 1 year,and 4.5 years. Participants made pleasantness ratings both at the time of recording the eventand during testing of the events. Analyses of the data show that judgments of pleasantness orunpleasantness of an event became less extreme as retention interval increased. This effect waslarger for unpleasant events than for pleasant events. Subsequent memory ratings of pleasantand unpleasant events showed a modest effect of pleasantness with pleasant eventsremembered slightly better than unpleasant events. The theoretical implications of thesedata are discussed. & 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Appl. Cognit. Psychol. 11: 399–413 (1997)No. of Figures: 1 No. of Tables: 2 No. of References: 23

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