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Fading of Affect Associated with Negative Child‐Related Memories Varies by Parental Child Abuse Potential
Author(s) -
Skowronski John J.,
Crouch Julie L.,
Coley Sarah L.,
Sasson Sapir,
Wagner Michael F.,
Rutledge Ericka,
Cote Kreila,
Miksys Christie,
Milner Joel S.
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
applied cognitive psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.719
H-Index - 100
eISSN - 1099-0720
pISSN - 0888-4080
DOI - 10.1002/acp.3287
Subject(s) - psychology , affect (linguistics) , moderation , recall , context (archaeology) , developmental psychology , recall bias , cognition , social psychology , psychiatry , cognitive psychology , paleontology , communication , biology
Summary Positive memories tend to hold their affective intensity across time better than negative memories, a phenomenon referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB). An initial study explored this bias in the context of parents' affective responses to memories involving their children. Specifically, parents (N = 90 for Study 1) were asked to recall three positive events and three negative events involving their children. Next, parents rated how positively or negatively they felt when each event occurred and at recall. Results revealed that parents at high risk of physical child abuse showed a smaller FAB than low‐risk parents. The smaller FAB effect observed among high‐risk parents occurred largely because affect associated with negative child‐related events faded minimally over time. This risk moderation effect did not emerge in a second study in which parents (N = 90 for Study 2) recalled general events that were not limited to events involving children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.