Muir, K. and Brown, C. orcid.org/0000-0001-9697-4878 (Cover date: January/February 2024) The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the healthy fading of emotions in autobiographical memory mediated via in-person social disclosures. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 38 (1). e4149. ISSN 0888-4080
Abstract
We explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom upon the fading affect bias in autobiographical memory, which describes the greater fading of negative emotional intensity over time compared to positive. Across two studies we show that the magnitude of the FAB is smaller for pandemic-related events compared to pandemic-unrelated events. The FAB is thought to represent the result of healthy coping processes operating on autobiographical memory and our results indicate that these processes were disrupted, to a certain extent, by the pandemic. These effects were mediated by frequent in-person social disclosures of pleasant pandemic-unrelated events, which was, in turn, associated with less fading of positive affect. Further, the FAB for both pandemic-related and unrelated events was mediated by disclosures via social media. Together, these results highlight the potential effectiveness of using various modes of communication to facilitate emotional regulation processes in autobiographical memory.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. Applied Cognitive Psychology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. |
Keywords: | autobiographical memory; COVID-19 pandemic; emotion; fading affect bias; social disclosure |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Psychology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 15 Nov 2023 16:36 |
Last Modified: | 16 Jan 2024 11:57 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/acp.4149 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:205327 |