The Relation of Sexual Activity and Attachment to the Fading Affect Bias Across Sexual and Non-Sexual Events

Abstract

The Fading Affect Bias (FAB) is the faster fading of unpleasant than pleasant emotions tied to autobiographical event memories. This phenomenon is negatively related to unhealthy/maladaptive variables (e.g., psychological distress) and positively related to healthy/adaptive variables (e.g., partner-esteem). These results suggest that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism that helps individuals adapt to emotionally harmful experiences. Although past research compared romantic sexual experiences to romantic non-sexual experiences and juxtaposed romantic relationship events and non-romantic relationship events, it did not compare sexual events to non-sexual and non-romantic relationship events, which was done in the current study. We found a larger FAB for non-sexual, non-romantic events than sexual events, and the expected relations between healthy/adaptive and unhealthy/maladaptive non-sexual and sexual variables and the FAB. We also found complex three-way interactions in which sexual and relationship variables predicted the FAB that were mediated by rehearsal ratings. Implications were discussed.