AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL MEMORY - UNPLEASANTNESS FADES FASTER THAN PLEASANTNESS OVER TIME

We examined the effects of retention intervals on the recollection of the emotional content of events. Memory for personal events was tested for three retention intervals: 3 months, 1 year, and 4.5 years. Parti cipants made pleasantness ratings both at the time of recording the ev ent and during testing of the events. Analyses of the data show that j udgments of pleasantness or unpleasantness of an event became less ext reme as retention interval increased. This effect was larger for unple asant events than for pleasant events; Subsequent memory ratings of pl easant and unpleasant events showed a modest effect of pleasantness wi th pleasant events remembered slightly better than unpleasant events. The theoretical implications of these data are discussed. (C) 1997 Joh n Wiley & Sons, Ltd.