The Relation of Sexual Activity and Attachment to the Fading Affect Bias Across Sexual and Non‐Sexual Events

The Fading Affect Bias (FAB) is the faster fading of unpleasant than pleasant emotions tied to autobiographical event memories. This phenomenon is negatively related to unhealthy/maladaptive variables (e.g., psychological distress) and positively related to healthy/adaptive variables (e.g., partner‐esteem). These results suggest that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism that helps individuals adapt to emotionally harmful experiences. Although past research compared romantic sexual experiences to romantic non‐sexual experiences and juxtaposed romantic relationship events and non‐romantic relationship events, it did not compare sexual events to non‐sexual and non‐romantic relationship events, which was done in the current study. We found a larger FAB for non‐sexual, non‐romantic events than sexual events, and the expected relations between healthy/adaptive and unhealthy/maladaptive non‐sexual and sexual variables and the FAB. We also found complex three‐way interactions in which sexual and relationship variables predicted the FAB that were mediated by rehearsal ratings. Implications were discussed.