Grief and Avoidant Death Attitudes Combine to Predict the Fading Affect Bias

The fading affect bias (FAB) occurs when unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect. To detect mechanisms that influence the FAB in the context of death, we measured neuroticism, depression, anxiety, negative religious coping, death attitudes, and complicated grief as potential predictors o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of environmental research and public health 2018-08, Vol.15 (8), p.1736
Main Authors: Gibbons, Jeffrey A, Lee, Sherman A, Fehr, Ashley M A, Wilson, Kalli J, Marshall, Timothy R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation, Psychological
Adolescent
Adult
Anxiety
Attitude to Death
Attitudes
Bereavement
Bias
College students
Coping
Death
Depression
Emotions
Fading
Female
Grief
Humans
Hypotheses
Male
Mental depression
Mortality
Neurosis
Neuroticism
Post traumatic stress disorder
Psychology
Religion
Researchers
Spirituality
Studies
Variables
Young Adult
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Summary:The fading affect bias (FAB) occurs when unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect. To detect mechanisms that influence the FAB in the context of death, we measured neuroticism, depression, anxiety, negative religious coping, death attitudes, and complicated grief as potential predictors of FAB for unpleasant/death and pleasant events at 2 points in time. The FAB was robust across older and newer events, which supported the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Unexpectedly, complicated grief positively predicted FAB, and death avoidant attitudes moderated this relation, such that the Initial Event Affect by Grief interaction was only significant at the highest 3 quintiles of death avoidant attitudes. These results were likely due to moderate grief ratings, which were, along with avoidant death attitudes, related to healthy outcomes in past research. These results implicate complicated grief and death avoidant attitudes as resiliency mechanisms that are mobilized during bereavement to minimize its unpleasant effects.
ISSN:1660-4601
1661-7827
1660-4601
DOI:10.3390/ijerph15081736