Event Self-Importance, Event Rehearsal, and
the Fading Affect Bias in Autobiographical Memory
TIMOTHY D. RITCHIE
JOHN J. SKOWRONSKI
SARAH E. WOOD
Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois, USA
W. RICHARD WALKER
Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA
RODNEY J. VOGL
Christian Brothers University, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
JEFFREY A. GIBBONS
Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia, USA
Prior research suggests that the negative affect associated with autobiographical
memories fades faster across time than the positive affect associated with such mem-
ories (i.e., the fading affect bias, FAB). Data described in the present article reveal
several moderators of this bias. The FAB is small when events are perceived to be self-
important, psychologically open, or self-caused; it is large when events are perceived
to be atypical of a person’s life. The data also suggest that the FAB is especially large
when events are rehearsed in the course of conveying events to others, or when events
are being privately savored or solved; this effect does not emerge for various other
forms of private rehearsal. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed.
Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, and Vohs (2001) argued that ‘‘bad is stronger
than good.’’ This conclusion is false in the domain of autobiographical memory.
Data suggest that normally-functioning people remember a greater number of
positive personal events than negative ones (see Walker, Skowronski, & Thompson,
2003b). In addition, the intensity of emotions prompted by recall of positive
autobiographical events fades less rapidly over time than does the intensity of
emotions prompted by recall of negative events (Walker, Vogl, & Thompson, 1997).
Received 9 March 2005; accepted 24 January 2006
Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a National Institute of Health grant (1-R15-
MH063724 – 1A1) given to John J. Skowronski.
We thank Leslie Bethencourt and Amy Martin for their assistance in coding some of the data
contained in this article.
Address correspondence to Timothy D. Ritchie, Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois
University, DeKalb, Illinois, 60115, USA. E-mail: tritchie@niu.edu
Self and Identity, 5: 172 – 195, 2006
Copyright ª 2006 Psychology Press
ISSN: 1529-8868 print/1529-8876 online
DOI: 10.1080/15298860600591222
172 http://www.psypress.com/sai

This differential fading of the affect prompted by autobiographical event recall is
termed the Fading Affect Bias (FAB).
Although known for some time (e.g., Cason, 1932; Holmes, 1970), a flurry of new
research has been directed toward establishing the validity of the FAB. For example,
one frequent criticism is that the methodology used in some studies asked
participants to recall emotions that they experienced at an event’s occurrence. Such
judgments could yield retrospective biases that contribute to the FAB. However, if
the FAB were caused by such biases, the FAB should be eliminated or substantially
weakened by methodologies that allow researchers to know the emotion experienced
at the time of the event. Indeed, the FAB has been obtained when participants make
ratings of emotions at the time of event occurrence (Walker et al., 1997).
The results of other studies (see Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Walker, 2004;
Walker et al., 1997; Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003a)
similarly attest to the FAB’s validity. These results suggest that the FAB is unrelated
to: (a) confounds between event characteristics (e.g., age, extremity, types of events
recalled) and event valence; (b) better recall of pleasant events than unpleasant events
(the FAB effect emerges, even controlling for pleasantness of event recall); and
(c) theories that participants may have about affect changes in memory over time
(i.e., peoples’ theories about emotion change over time are incorrect). One goal of the
present study is to add to the corpus of data documenting the validity of the FAB.
The validity of the FAB is bolstered by its fit with several theoretical perspectives.
For example, in the mobilization –minimization hypothesis, Taylor (1991) argues
that individuals have an especially strong initial reaction to negative events.
However, across time biological, cognitive, and social processes minimize the impact
of those negative events. In support of this notion in the autobiographical memory
domain, data suggest that cognitive processes related to social discourse speed fading
of affect associated with negative life events (Pennebaker, 1997).
However, in the context of the FAB it may be incorrect to focus solely on
minimization of negativity: Various processes may also work to enhance or maintain
positivity. For example, Bryant (1989, 2003) contends that people can use their
cognitive resources to amplify and sustain (i.e., savor) positive moments in their lives.
Bryant further suggests that individuals reminisce to rekindle good feelings from past
events, savor the pleasantness of present moments, and anticipate good feelings that
may occur in the future. Consistent with this idea, data from Skowronski et al. (2004)
show that the action of social and cognitive resources can, indeed, work to maintain
the affect associated with positive event memories across time.
Given these two theoretical perspectives, a second goal of the present study is to
more closely examine the separate contributions of negativity-decreasing processes,
and of positivity-enhancing processes, to the FAB.
The Self and Fading Affect
One line of inquiry suggested by both the Taylor (1991) and the Bryant (2003)
conceptions concerns the role that the self might play in the FAB. For example,
one might consider how event self-importance might be related to the intensity of
emotion that accompanies event recall. One sensible speculation (the self-importance
view) is that events that are perceived to be self-important will prompt more intense
emotion at event recall than events that are not, regardless of whether events are
positive or negative. However, an alternative view would come from those self-
theorists who emphasize that people are motivated to self-protect and self-enhance
Event Self-Importance 173