Fading Affect Bias

Fading Affect Bias

Reflection

Let's ponder a bit on the below :

Between the "pleasant" and "unpleasant" significant events from your life, which one are you able to feel more of whenever remembered/ recalled ? 

From a "not-so-pleasant" significant event that occured in your life which could be something like a long-awaited vacation, a job/ business opportunity missed, an argument/ interaction that had life impacting implications, or any other significant event from life, again, what are you able to feel more/ most whenever remembered/ recalled ? 

Well, if you have never given the above a thought, then most likely your first guess would be that you would recall/ remember more of the "unhappy memories" rather than the "happy memories" but to your surprise, the results from the various studies and research in the area proves out to be contrary, which means it's the "happy memories" that we remember/ recall more of !

Well, the above discussion is an indication of a bias known as "Fading Affect". Let's explore it further 

Definition and Background

The definition of the Fading Affect Bias goes like this - "The intensity of affect (feelings) associated with negative memories fades faster than the affect (feelings) associated with positive memories." Elaborating it further - the affect prompted by autobiographical event recall typically decreases in intensity as time from the original event increases. But, the extent to which the intensity fades is different for positive events and negative events. The intensity of the emotions felt during event recall as compared to event occurence, tends to fade faster for negative events than for the positive events. This differential fading of affect over time between negative and positive event is referred to as the "Fading Affect Bias" (FAB).  

So, between the time of the actual happening of the event and its recall, the memories start fading for both the negative and positive event but when it comes to feelings associated with these events/ memories, then we see a difference in fading. The feelings associated with negative memories tend to fade faster than the feelings associated with positive memories. 

(Autobiographical Event/ Memory - Simply defining, any significant event that makes our personal history or timeline is an autobiographical event and any memory related to that is termed as autobiographical memory). 

The earliest reference to this bias (Fading Affect Bias) is of Cason (1932) whose data suggested that emotions prompted by positive event maintained more of their intensity across time compared to emotions prompted by negative event.

The "modern era" of FAB research is attributed to Walker et al. (1997) whose key findings were that humans may become selective in their memory of the event and certain memory may fade off but the emotions related to the event remains intact.

Further research on FAB is attributed to Ritchie et al. (2009) whose study identified four possible trends pertaining to memory - Fixed Affect, Fading Affect, Flourishing Affect and Flexible Affect. The study revealed that Fading Affect was more prominent (51%) as compared with the other three when it came to negative occurences, which means that Fading Affect came into play during memories related to negative events.  

Why Does Fading Affect Bias (FAB) occur ?

• Humans are always motivated to view their lives in a positive light 

• Recalling of positive events is generally stronger than that of negative events and emotional response prompted by positive memories often tend to be stronger than the emotional response prompted by negative memories. 

• Evidence also highlight that over time, we may tend to start perceiving even the negative events in a more positive way.

• Humans are always seeking happiness 

   

Benefits of Fading Affect Bias (FAB)

FAB impacts us positively in many ways such as 

• Maintaining a positive outlook towards life 

• Building a healthy self-awareness and self-esteem 

• Exhibiting good Coping Skills to deal with new experiences

• Developing attitude of seeing the best in any situation. 

More About Fading Affect Bias(FAB)

• Not every person may exhibit FAB. People suffering from dysphoria (mild depression) may perceive their lives to be more negative than the lives of others. In the case of people having dysphoria, the memory is less detailed.

• emotions prompted by event memories are not always the same as the emotions prompted by the actual event 

• memories of the event are forgotten whereas the accompanying emotions persist

Seeking the silver lining in every cloud !