REPRESSIVE COPING STYLE AND THE EXPERIENCE AND RECALL OF EMOTION - A NATURALISTIC STUDY OF DAILY AFFECT

Research shows that people characterized as repressors display inhibit ed recall for unpleasant memories. In this study, the relationship bet ween repressive coping style and the recall of affect near the time of the experience was compared to delayed recall. An experience sampling technique was used to collect affect data twice daily for 4 weeks. Re pressive coping style was found to be related to low levels of average daily unpleasant affect and lowered delayed recall of unpleasant affe ct. Unlike repressors, high anxious individuals overestimated unpleasa nt affect during delayed recall. Repressors did not exhibit isolation of the dominant unpleasant affect from nondominant unpleasant affect i n daily reporting. The overall pattern of results suggests that the ef fect of repressive coping style is to diminish the encoding of all unp leasant affect, whereas trait anxiety appears to promote overestimatio n in the recall of unpleasant affect.