Abstract
The current research examined the links between depressive symptomology and anxiety on the fading of affect associated with positive and negative autobiographical memories. Participants (N = 296) recalled and rated positive and negative events in terms of how pleasant or unpleasant they were at the time they occurred and at the time of event recollection. Multilevel mediation analyses identified evidence that higher levels of depressive symptoms were directly associated with lower affect fade for both negative and positive memories. Tests of indirect effects indicated that depressive symptoms were indirectly related to lower affect fade for negative (but not positive) autobiographical memories via the heightened tendency to think about negative (but not positive) memories. Anxiety was unrelated to affect fade both directly and indirectly. These results suggest that people higher in depressive symptoms retain more negative affect due to an increased likelihood of thinking about negative autobiographical events.
Highlights
Coping with negative memories and savouring positive ones is thought to exemplify healthy emotion regulation [1,2,3]
We report on a large sample with a much greater range of clinically-relevant depressive symptomology and anxiety than have been examined previously
We examined the relationship between depressive symptomology and amount of time spent thinking about the specific event memories
Summary
Coping with negative memories and savouring positive ones is thought to exemplify healthy emotion regulation [1,2,3]. The studies that have done so [6, 7] have used a limited range of depression and anxiety symptomology inventory scores and have not examined these in concert. The current research uses a multilevel modelling technique to assess dimensional variation in depressive symptoms and anxiety to comprehensively examine the link between these psychopathologies and decreased affect fade. We report on a large sample with a much greater range of clinically-relevant depressive symptomology and anxiety than have been examined previously. The current research expands on this by examining potential mediators based on frequency of thinking about, talking about, or writing about positive and negative autobiographical memories
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