The Effect of Social Disclosure on the Intensity of Affect Provoked by Autobiographical Memories

Affect associated with negative autobiographical memories fades faster over time than affect associated with positive autobiographical memories (the fading affect bias). Data described in the present article suggest that this bias is observed when people use their own words to describe both the emotions that they originally felt in response to events in their lives and the emotions that they feel when they recall those events. The data also suggest that the fading affect bias is not a consequence of distortion in memory for the emotions experienced at event occurrence, but instead reflects current affective responses to memories for those events. Moreover, this bias has a social component. Frequently disclosed memories evince a stronger fading affect bias than less frequently disclosed memories. Memories disclosed to many types of people evince a stronger fading affect bias than memories disclosed to few types of people. Finally, the relation between social disclosure and fading affect appears to be causal: the results of an experiment demonstrate that social disclosure decreases the fading of pleasant affect and increases the fading of unpleasant affect associated with autobiographical memories.