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Why people rehearse their memories: Frequency of use and relations to theintensity of emotions associated with autobiographical memoriesW. Richard Walker a; John J. Skowronski b; Jeffrey A. Gibbons c; Rodney J. Vogl d; Timothy D. Ritchie e

a Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA b Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, IL, USA c

Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, USA d Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN, USAe University of Southampton, UK

First Published on: 04 August 2009

To cite this Article Walker, W. Richard, Skowronski, John J., Gibbons, Jeffrey A., Vogl, Rodney J. and Ritchie, Timothy D.(2009)'Whypeople rehearse their memories: Frequency of use and relations to the intensity of emotions associated with autobiographicalmemories',Memory,17:7,760 — 773

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09658210903107846

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Why people rehearse their memories: Frequency of useand relations to the intensity of emotions associated

with autobiographical memories

W. Richard Walker

Winston-Salem State University, Winston-Salem, NC, USA

John J. Skowronski

Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, IL, USA

Jeffrey A. Gibbons

Christopher Newport University, Newport News, VA, USA

Rodney J. Vogl

Christian Brothers University, Memphis, TN, USA

Timothy D. Ritchie

University of Southampton, UK

People may choose to rehearse their autobiographical memories in silence or to disclose their memorieswith other people. This paper focuses on five types of memory rehearsal: involuntary rehearsal, rehearsalto maintain an event memory, rehearsal to re-experience the emotion of an event, rehearsal tounderstand an event, or rehearsal for social communication. A total of 337 participants recalled eventmemories, provided estimates of how often each event was rehearsed and for what reason, and rated theaffective characteristics of the events. Rehearsal frequency was highest for social communication andlowest for rehearsals aimed at understanding events. For many rehearsal types, rehearsal was morefrequent for positive than negative events. Frequently rehearsed events tended to show less affectivefading. The pattern changed when events were socially rehearsed. For positive events, increased socialrehearsal was related to a reduction in affective fading. For negative events, increased social rehearsalwas associated with increased affective fading.

Keywords: Autobiographical memory; Rehearsal; Emotion; Fading affect bias.

People rehearse life events in various ways and for

various purposes. A New York firefighter might

try to inform others by appearing on a news

programme and recounting his experiences during

the collapse of the World Trade Center. An

architect at the firm that constructed the building

might silently review the sequence of events in the

collapse, looking for clues that might explain the

# 2009 Psychology Press, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa business

Address correspondence to: W. Richard Walker, Department of Social Sciences, Winston-Salem State University, Winston-

Salem, NC 27110, USA. E-mail at walkerr@wssu.edu

We would like to thank many undergraduate research assistants who helped collect and tabulate the data on this extended

research project: Lynn Wootton, Joshua Stimple, T. Rene Forst, Scott Powell, and Lakisha Pinson.

MEMORY, 2009, 17 (7), 760�773

http://www.psypress.com/memory DOI:10.1080/09658210903107846

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building’s failure and running mental simulationsthat might help to prevent similar disasters in thefuture. In an attempt to improve his mood, asurviving spouse might privately think about thepositive life events that were experienced with apartner who died in the collapse. An office workerwho survived the collapse might have involuntaryflashbacks in which she sees the massive dustcloud envelop her as a tower collapses. A patriotmight intentionally review the sequence of eventsat the towers, privately vowing to ‘‘never forget’’.

These examples were not chosen capriciously,for they correspond to different rehearsal typesthat have been explored by various memoryresearchers. However, there has only been limitedsystematic exploration of these different rehear-sal types as they relate to autobiographicalmemory. The research in the present article isintended to help remedy this deficiency.

More specifically, the present article addressesfour issues concerning autobiographical eventrehearsal. The first issue concerns the relativefrequency of rehearsal types. To explore this issuewe assessed the extent to which people rely onsome rehearsal types relative to other types. Thesecond issue pertains to whether specific charac-teristics of event memories are related to parti-cular rehearsal types. That is, we assessed whethercertain attributes of a memory were more stronglypredictive of the use of some rehearsal types inpreference to other types. The third issue concernspossible gender differences in rehearsal typeusage. Memory data show that men and womenoften focus on different aspects of memory(Gabriel & Gardner, 1999; Skowronski, Betz,Thompson, & Shannon, 1991; Skowronski &Thompson, 1990; Thompson, Skowronski,Larsen, & Betz, 1996; Wegner, Erber, & Ray-mond, 1991). One cause of such differences maybe that men and women rehearse events indifferent ways or with differing frequencies. Thefourth issue evolved from our prior research intothe fading affect bias (FAB). Our results showthat, over time, negative affect associated withevent memories fades more quickly than positiveaffect associated with such memories (Ritchie etal., 2006; Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, &Thompson, 2003a; Walker, Skowronski, &Thompson, 2003b; Walker, Vogl, & Thompson,1997). We explored whether these effects arerelated to the different types of rehearsals asso-ciated with positive and negative events.

The insight that different types of rehearsalmight have different effects on memory comes

from several sources. For example, Craik and

Lockhart’s (1972) levels of processing framework

distinguishes between rote and elaborative re-

hearsal. They suggest that the latter enhances

recall to a greater degree than the former. A

second clue about the differential impact of

rehearsal types on recall comes from research

suggesting that employing a variety of mental

strategies while rehearsing will yield superior

retrieval compared to simply relying upon a select

few techniques (e.g., Herrmann, 1991; Higbee,

1996). A third clue comes from recent research

examining the effects of selective silence on

memory in cases in which information is socially

shared. Data show that forgetting in a listener is

more pronounced when the speaker is silent

about some, but not all, of a complex of related

information than when the speaker fails to discuss

the related information in its entirety (Cuc,

Koppel, & Hirst, 2007).Bluck and Alea (2002) described the func-

tions of autobiographical memory rehearsal

(reminiscence) as being Social (aimed towards

social disclosure), Directive (aimed towards

problem solving), Self (aimed towards self-

awareness), and Other (rehearsals that are

escapist or compulsive). These rehearsal func-

tions map fairly well onto the five rehearsal

types explored in this paper (see Skowronski &

Walker, 2004). Four of these rehearsal types

represent rehearsals in which the individual

rehearsed the memory while remaining silent

to others. The fifth rehearsal type represents

memory rehearsals in which people chose to

break their silence and socially disclose the

events. Table 1 presents a summary of the

rehearsal types.1

1 We conducted a pilot study to verify that these rehearsal

types are frequently used. In this pilot study participants took

part in an hour-long discussion of their personal memories and

their patterns of event rehearsal. Three researchers asked each

participant about specific event memories and the strategies

they employed to retrieve their memories. During this

discussion, participants were asked to write down the various

ways in which they retrieved and thought about their personal

memories. Two undergraduate assistants who were blind to the

research hypotheses were instructed to code the participants’

responses into as many unique categories as possible (Cohen’s

k�0.83). All disputes were settled by discussion. The

assistants then compiled a list of the rehearsal types that

were recorded by at least half of the participants. All five of

the rehearsal types described in the present article were

reported by at least half of the participants.

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REHEARSAL TYPES EXAMINEDIN THIS PAPER

One rehearsal type is involuntary memory rehear-

sal. This occurs when an event memory comesunbidden to mind. For example, a person mighthear a song that triggers a childhood memory.Such involuntary memory rehearsals have typi-cally been discussed in the context of traumaticmemory (e.g., Nadel & Jacobs, 1998) and depres-sion (LePore, 1997). However, using a diaryprocedure in which participants recorded involun-tary rehearsals as they occurred, Berntsen’s results(1996, 1998) indicated that involuntary memoryrehearsals occurred frequently in most people.Such rehearsals were often linked to environmen-tal stimuli that triggered recollection and weremore often more positive than negative. BecauseBerntsen’s evidence suggests that people regularlyexperience involuntary rehearsals, we explored thefrequency and the impact of such rehearsals in thestudy reported in the present article.

A second type of rehearsal that we explore isrehearsal for maintaining memory for events or for

event details. In Craik and Lockhart’s (1972) view,the notion of memory maintenance suggestsa relatively superficial level of processing andrelatively poor long-term retention. However,memories that are rehearsed for this purposemay also involve the self (Ritchie et al., 2006).For example, people who experience a positive andself-relevant event (e.g., a wedding) might re-hearse the event memories so that those pleasantevents could be savoured at a later date. Similarly,a prisoner might rehearse memories of cruel guard

behaviours so that those memories might provide amotive for later retribution. Given that self-relevant information appears to be well recalledover time (Conway & Dewhurst, 1995; Conway &Playdell-Pearce, 2000; Larsen & Berntsen, 2000),these kinds of maintenance rehearsals might alsobe relevant enough to the self that they producelong-lasting and accurate memories. Hence weexplored the impact of these rehearsals in thepresent study.

The third type of rehearsal explored in thecurrent article is rehearsal for the purpose of re-experiencing the emotion associated with the event.As illustrated by phenomena such as the fadingaffect bias and post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD), recall of autobiographical events oftenproduces an emotional response similar to thatexperienced at event occurrence. In fact, sucheffects are so powerful that autobiographical eventrecall is an excellent way to induce mood inlaboratory settings (for an example, see Ritchie,Skowronski, Hartnett, Wells, & Walker, 2009). Thereality of such emotions is likely reflected in theneural activity that occurs while rememberingemotional events. That is, findings from severalstudies suggest that neural mechanisms may actto recapitulate an emotional state early in theretrieval process and then produce a responsesimilar to that elicited by the perception of anemotional stimulus upon successful recollection(see Buchanan, 2007). Moreover, some evidencealready suggests that people intentionally engagein mental activity to engender positive emotions.For example, research has shown that it is possibleto alleviate negative mood by accessing positiveinformation about the self or thinking about pastsuccesses (Josephson, Singer, & Salovey, 1996).Failure to engage in such processes might havenegative long-term effects. For example, Lok andBishop (1999) investigated the strategies thatpeople employ to control their emotions, includingrehearsal. Their results indicated that people in themidst of depression or anxiety often intentionallyengage in mental activity that encourages negativeemotion (see Harrington & Blankenship, 2002).The powerful effects of such mood-altering re-hearsals and the likelihood that people intention-ally use them with regularity prompted us toinvestigate the effects of such rehearsals in thisstudy.

People may rehearse autobiographical mem-ories to better understand events, the fourth type ofrehearsal that we explore in the present article.Considerable evidence suggests that people think

TABLE 1

Descriptions of the different rehearsal types explored

in the study

Rehearsal type Description

Involuntary The event memory just ‘‘popped’’

into my head for no apparent reason

Maintain Memory

Details

The event memory was recalled in

order to keep the details of the event

accurate in memory

Re-experience the

Emotion

The event memory was recalled in

order to re-experience the emotion

associated with the memory

Social Communication The event memory was recalled in

order to share the memory with

others

Understand the

Event

The event memory was recalled in

order to understand the implications

or meaning of the event

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about life events that puzzle them or that representlife failures (DiPaula & Campbell, 2002). Thistendency is particularly strong in individuals whoare depressed (Watkins & Baracia, 2001; Watkins& Teasdale, 2001). One might expect this cognitiveactivity to include the rehearsal of event details,which should improve event memory. However,depressive patients often have event memoriesthat are overgeneral when compared to the eventmemories of non-depressive people (Williamset al., 2007). Furthermore, there is evidence tosuggest that an event tends to be forgotten if it hasbeen cognitively resolved (Beike & Landoll, 2000;Ritchie et al., 2006). Given the alternative possi-bilities presented by these results, we thought thatexploring the effects of rehearsing an event for thepurposes of understanding the event was war-ranted.

Finally, social communication rehearsals havealready been shown to have an effect on variousaspects of psychological functioning. For example,LePore (1997) found that individuals who engagedin expressive writing about their event memoriesexperienced fewer subsequent intrusive thoughtsand memories than individuals who did not writeabout them in this manner. Pennebaker (1997a,1997b); also see Pennebaker, Colder, & Sharp,1990) has found that expressive writing and dis-closure are related to improved health and coping.Additional research specifically relates the com-munication of events to autobiographical memory.For example, Fivush (1998) found that parentsreminisced differently with daughters than withsons. Parents discussed event memories in moredetail and with more emotional focus with theirdaughters compared to their sons. Consequently,girls showed more consistent and stable autobio-graphical memories than did boys. Such resultswere presaged by Nelson (1993), who showed thatthe onset of storytelling was related to the onset offirst autobiographical memories in children.

In the face of such research, Pasupathi (2001)proposed a model suggesting that the socialrehearsal of event memories may help to organisethe autobiographical memory system. For exam-ple, results from two studies (Pasupathi, 2003)suggest that people socially rehearse past eventswith the goal to regulate their emotions. Theresults also suggest that socially rehearsed eventssometimes lead to emotional benefits that areindependent of the goal to regulate emotion.Interestingly, these results also suggest that menmay feel less negative while socially rehearsingunpleasant past events than women. Given the

potential importance of such ideas, rehearsal forthe purpose of social communication was the fifthrehearsal type that we explored.

The social sharing of events is a commonoccurrence (for approximately 90% of emotionalevents; Curci & Rime, 2008; Rime, Corsini, &Herbette, 2002). Previous research has shown thatpeople share an event with others on the day thatthe event occurs for about 60% of emotionalevents (Rime, 2008). In addition, the people willrepeatedly share the event with others over thenext several days following the event (Rime,2008). It has also been reported that peopletypically share their emotions with family, friends,and other people with whom they share emo-tional intimacy (Rime, Finkenauer, Luminet,Zech, & Philippot, 1998). The social sharing ofemotions typically involves talking to othersabout both the circumstances associated withthe emotional event and one’s emotional reac-tions to the event (Luminet, Bouts, Delie, Man-stead, & Rime, 2000). It has been suggested thatthe social sharing of emotional events aids in theachievement of both emotional goals and infor-mational goals (Luminet et al., 2000).

One of the most important factors determin-ing the amount of social sharing is the emotionalintensity of the event (Luminet et al., 2000). Inone study approximately half of the variance inthe extent of social sharing was accounted for bythe variance in emotional intensity of the event(Luminet et al., 2000). However, the proportionof positive and negative events that are sociallyshared is roughly equivalent (about 85�95%;Rime, Mesquita, Philippot, & Boca, 1991).Luminet and his colleagues (2000) suggest thatsocial sharing may aid in the cognitive proces-sing of emotional information. Zech and Rime(2005) report that there are perceived benefits tosocial sharing of emotional events. Their partici-pants claimed to experience emotional relief andinsight into the event after sharing it with others(Zech & Rime, 2005). It is important to notethat although Zech and Rime (2005) supportedthe notion that there is a perceived benefit tosocial sharing, even those who shared theiremotions with others did not recover from theemotional impact of an event. However, Zechand Rime (2005) point out that the lack ofemotional recovery may have been due to therole of the listener in their experiments. Inessence, the listener responded to the speakerin a neutral yet empathetic manner. Zech andRime (2005) suggest that in more natural

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settings the listener may play a more active role(e.g., offering advice) in getting the speaker tomore positively reappraise the event.

QUESTIONS AND HYPOTHESES

The twin questions driving the present research arewhether particular rehearsal types are meaning-fully associated with particular kinds of autobio-graphical memories and whether these rehearsaltypes are related to the fading affect bias. Put moresimply, do people rehearse positive and negativeevents in different ways and, if so, can thesedifferences in rehearsal help us understand howemotions fade in memory?

The existing literature can be used to generateseveral predictions concerning the frequency ofparticular rehearsal types and their relation torehearsal and fading affect. First, given theargument that the development of the autobio-graphical memory system is prompted by parent�child interaction (Fivush, 1998; Nelson, 1993) onemight expect that communication-related rehear-sals would be more prevalent than the otherrehearsal types.

Second, the idea that the motivation to avoidnegative stimuli is stronger than the motivation toapproach positive stimuli (see Baumeister, Brat-slavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001) suggests thatpleasant events should be more frequently re-hearsed than unpleasant events. However, thiseffect may not appear for rehearsals intended toincrease event understanding. Given the litera-ture suggesting that failure and puzzlement oftenproduce rumination, it may be that these under-standing-based rehearsals are more frequent fornegative than for positive events.

Third, rehearsals should be more frequent forevents that were initially extreme in affect inten-sity than for less extreme events. This followsfrom the idea that extreme events are especiallylikely to be interesting, and one social discoursenorm is to communicate information that will beinteresting to a listener (see McCann & Higgins,1992). However, these rehearsal tendencies mayhave different effects on the intensity of affectprompted when positive events and negativeevents are recalled. High rates of social eventdisclosure may dissipate the affect prompted bynegative event recall, but promote the retention ofaffect prompted by positive event recall (Penne-baker et al., 1990; Ritchie et al., 2006; Skowronski& Walker, 2004).

METHOD

The current study combined data sets collected atthree universities.2 Even though the samples wereobtained at very different institutions (a tradi-tional undergraduate institution, a commutercampus, a historically African-American univer-sity), similar procedures and measures wereemployed at each institution. Hence, data fromthe samples were combined and entered into anomnibus set of analyses.

Sample 1

Participants. A total of 134 undergraduates atKansas State University participated in this ex-periment in partial fulfilment of a course require-ment. The participants were primarily Caucasiansbetween the ages of 18 and 22.

Procedure. As part of a mass testing session, allparticipants were asked to recall four emotionallyintense memories from the most recent year. Theywrote a short description of each memory. Parti-cipants were explicitly asked to recall some eventsthat were emotionally extreme and some eventsthat were less extreme, and some events that werepositive and some that were negative. Participantswere given 20 minutes to complete this task.

Afterwards, participants provided several rat-ings of each recorded event. Participants estimatedeach event’s age. Estimates were made in months,weeks, and days, but for analysis all estimates wereconverted to days. The median event age was 191days. Examination of the data revealed that someparticipants recalled events that were considerablyolder than they were instructed to provide, but weretained these events in our analyses.

Participants provided two ratings of the plea-santness of each event. The first rating reflectedthe pleasantness of the event at the time the event

2 Our autobiographical memory studies often generate

more data than can be conveniently described in a single

paper. Furthermore, because of the variety of data that are

collected, a single data set can often address a variety of

research questions. This characterises the data set used in the

present article. For example, elements of this data set were

used in a paper by Walker et al. (2003a); Table 1 was also

depicted in Skowronski and Walker (2004). For purposes of

clarity, a few results concerning fading affect and valence

differences in fading affect are repeated from those earlier

articles. However, the results that are reported in the present

article, especially the results from the regression analyses, go

substantially beyond the results described in either of those

two articles.

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occurred (initial pleasantness). The second ratingreflected the pleasantness experienced when theevent was recalled (current pleasantness). Bothratings were made on a 7-point scale ranging from�3 (extremely unpleasant) to �3 (extremely

pleasant), with 0 being neutral. Prior to makingthese ratings, participants were cautioned thatpleasantness might change in several ways or itmight not change at all.

Participants also estimated how many timesthey either thought about or talked about theevent since it occurred. These estimates weremade in whole numbers. After providing thisoverall estimate, participants were asked to dividethis overall rehearsal frequency estimate intoeach of six possible rehearsal types. The rehearsaltypes and the description of each type aredepicted in Table 1. These were as follows: (1)involuntary, (2) to maintain memory for an event,(3) to re-experience the emotions associated withan event, (4) to help understand the event better,(5) to communicate the event to others, and (6) ageneric ‘‘other/don’t know’’ category for rehear-sals that did not fit the previous categories.Participants were told to consider two issueswhen making these estimates: (1) whether therehearsals private or public, and (2) the primarypurpose of the rehearsal.

Sample 2

Participants. A total of 44 African-Americanundergraduates at Winston-Salem State Univer-sity participated in this experiment in exchangefor course extra credit. Participants were betweenthe ages of 18 and 35.

Procedure. Participants were tested in smallgroups of two to six people. They were asked toretrieve six autobiographical memories. Becausemany participants in this sample provided eventage estimates that were not interpretable, theseestimates were discarded. In addition, theseparticipants were not asked to estimate thenumber of involuntary rehearsals. All otherdetails of the procedure were identical to theprocedures reported in Sample 1.

Sample 3

Participants. A total of 159 undergraduates atThe Ohio State University at Newark partici-pated in this experiment in partial fulfilment of

course requirements. Participants were primarilyCaucasians ranging in ages from 18 to 28.

Procedure. Participants were tested in sessionscontaining between one to four participants, andthey were asked to retrieve six memories. Allother details of the procedure were identical tothose reported in Sample 1.

RESULTS

Analytic strategy

One set of analyses focused on event rehearsal:the frequency with which people reported rehear-sing events. These analyses explored relationsbetween the various predictors and the overallfrequency of event rehearsal, and also exploredrelations between the predictors and the fre-quency with which each of the different rehearsaltypes were used. A second set of analyses focusedon fading affect: the extent to which the intensityof emotion associated with an event decreasedfrom the time an event occurred to the time it wasrecalled.

To explore these questions, each criterionvariable of interest was entered into a series ofhierarchical multiple regression analyses. We useda regression analogue of the mixed-model AN-OVA. In the between-participants portion of theregression analyses, relations between the fadingaffect and rehearsal frequency criterion variables(for each, averaged across all trials for a givenparticipant) and the between-participants predic-tors of gender, sample, and their interaction wereevaluated using a between-participants errorterm. The regressions were conducted hierarchi-cally, with a first step simultaneously evaluatingonly the main effects of gender and sample andthe second step evaluating the interaction afteraccounting for the main effects.3

3 An additional between-participants variable that was

used in all analyses concerned was the emotional state of the

participant (dysphoric vs non-dysphoric). However, because

results concerning this variable are extensively discussed in

Walker et al. (2003a), in this article we omit discussion of

effects concerning this variable. Moreover, to simplify

presentation, we omit discussion of effects involving the

replication variable. Only two such effects emerged: a main

effect for replication, F(2, 329)�6.82, MSE�.68, pB.01; and

a Rehearsal Type�Gender�Replication interaction, F(7,

7549)�3.73, MSE�.17, pB.01. Examination of the means

for these effects suggests that they did not substantially qualify

interpretation of other effects reported.

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Other main effects and interactions of interestreflecting within-participant variance (rehearsaltype, event valence, event extremity main effectsand all interactions involving these variables) wereexamined in a separate set of hierarchical regres-sion models in which effects were evaluatedagainst the model residual error. These effectsreflect the variance remaining in the model afterbetween-participants effects are partitioned out ofthe analysis. To accomplish this, a dummy codingscheme applied to each participant’s data andentered into each model removed between-participants effects from the analyses in a mannersimilar to the way that within-participants varianceand between-participants variance are partitionedin ANOVA models (for a full explanation of thetechnique, see Cohen & Cohen, 1983). The mostimportant implication of this analytic approach isthat, as in mixed ANOVA models, there is noconfounding of within-participants and between-participants effects. Instead, the within-partici-pants effects are evaluated only after statisticallyaccounting for between-participants variance.

Finally, because of the large number of regres-sion analyses needed to fully explore the data, analpha value of .01 was used as the inferentialcriterion for all of our primary analyses. Giventhat follow-up tests were designed primarily tobetter understand these significant effects and notto test specific hypotheses, for these tests we useda more liberal alpha value of .05.

Event rehearsals

Frequency distributions for the rehearsal fre-quency estimates were often substantially skewed.Many estimates were modest (between 0 and 10),but a few were extreme (e.g., 1,000,000). Accord-ingly, we transformed these rehearsal estimatesprior to using them in our analyses. Specifically,we added 1 to all estimates (to get rid of theestimates of 0), and then applied a commonlogarithm transformation to these altered esti-mates. All analyses involving rehearsal used thislog-transformed variable. However, for ease ofinterpretation, we present rehearsal frequencymeans in terms of the original frequency esti-mates, which were determined from each analysisby calculating the antilog of each mean andsubtracting 1.4,5

Three primary interests drove examination ofthe rehearsal frequencies: (1) whether there weredifferences in the reported rehearsal frequencies

for different rehearsal types; (2) whether rehear-sal frequencies varied by an event’s pleasantnessor emotional extremity; and (3) whether overallrehearsal frequency varied by gender andwhether the genders used the rehearsal typeswith differing frequencies.

Effects involving rehearsal type, event valence,and event extremity. Rehearsal frequencies sig-nificantly differed across rehearsal types, F(4,7549)�424.76, MSE�0.18, pB.0001 (Table 2,third column). Tukey pairwise comparisons ofrehearsal type means showed that rehearsals thatwere prompted by communicating events toothers were more frequent than other rehearsaltypes. A middling frequency cluster included theinvoluntary rehearsal, maintenance rehearsal, andrehearsal to re-experience emotion categories.The lowest rehearsal frequency was for thecategory of rehearsals that promoted understand-ing of an event.

However, several higher-order interactionsemerged; these qualify the implications of therehearsal type main effect. The first of theseinvolved the variables of initial event valence andrehearsal type, F(4, 7630)�19.90, MSE�0.17,

TABLE 2

Mean frequency estimates by rehearsal type and event

pleasantness

Event pleasantness

Rehearsal type Pleasant Unpleasant Overall

Social Communication 4.75 4.49 4.68a

Maintain Memory Details** 2.09 1.57 1.82b

Re-experience Emotion*** 2.55 1.51 1.95b

Understanding the Event*** 0.45 0.32 0.38c

Involuntary*** 1.29 2.18 1.69b

In the Overall column, means with the same superscript do

not significantly differ. Rehearsal types that are superscripted

evinced significant differences in follow-up analyses for the

rehearsal frequencies associated with positive events and with

negative events: *pB.05. **pB.01. ***pB.001.

4 We were concerned that the results obtained in these

experiments may have been distorted by the transformation of

the rehearsal estimate data necessitated by the unusually high

estimates provided by some participants. We replicated the

study using frequency estimates reported on bounded

response scales, which eliminates these outliers. Analysis of

the data from this sample yielded results that were quite

similar to those reported in the present paper.5 The mean values that are reported are least-squares

means that reflect adjustments made because of other

variables entered into the regression models. These

adjustments tended to enhance the differences that were

present in the raw means.

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pB.0001. The means for this interaction (Table 2,first and second columns) show that positiveevents were rehearsed significantly more fre-quently than negative events for the followingrehearsal types: Maintaining memory details, re-experiencing emotions, and understanding events.Although the difference was not statisticallyreliable, positive events were also more oftenrehearsed than negative events for the purpose ofcommunicating events to others. The exception tothe pattern of greater rehearsal frequency forpositive than negative events was when rehearsalwas involuntary. For involuntary rehearsals, ne-gative events were rehearsed more frequentlythan positive events.

A second interaction involving the rehearsaltype variable also involved the variables of initialevent valence and initial event extremity, F(8,7549)�4.25, MSE�0.17, pB.0001. This effectwas produced by an increasing difference inrehearsal frequency between positive and nega-tive events with increasing event extremity. Forexample, when attempting to maintain memory,positive events were rehearsed more frequentlythan negative events, especially when events werehigh in extremity (low event extremity:MPositive�0.95; MNegative�0.90; high event extre-mity: MPositive�2.80; MNegative�1.95). Similarly,the more frequent involuntary rehearsal of nega-tive than positive events appeared only forextreme events (low event extremity: MPositive�1.19; MNegative�1.00; high event extremity:MPositive�1.51; MNegative�2.98).

The results also indicated that event extremitypredicted rehearsal frequency, F(2, 7549)�91.91,MSE�0.18, pB.0001. Tukey pairwise compari-sons showed that extreme events (M�2.29) wererehearsed more often than events that weremoderate (M�1.40) or low in extremity (M�1.04). A significant Rehearsal Type�Initial EventExtremity interaction, F(8, 7630)�4.64, MSE�0.17, pB.0001, simply indicates that the magni-tude of this extremity effect varied by rehearsaltype. For example, the difference in rehearsalfrequency between events low in extremity andevents high in extremity was smallest for under-standing event rehearsals (MLow�0.23;MExtreme�0.55) and largest for storytelling rehear-sals (MLow�2.89; MExtreme�5.76).

Effects involving participant gender. A relationbetween participant gender and rehearsal fre-quency was evident only in several higher-order interactions. The first was a significant

Rehearsal Type�Initial Event Extremity�Gen-der interaction, F(8, 7549)�2.53, MSE�0.17,pB.01. The means for this effect showed thatfor some rehearsal types, such as rehearsal for thepurpose of maintaining memory, the rehearsalrate rose with increasing event extremity more formen (MLow Extremity�0.86; MModerate Extremity�1.63; MHigh Extremity�2.71) than for women(MLow Extremity�0.99; MModerate Extremity�1.24;MHigh Extremity�2.09). However, when rehearsalswere for the purposes of social communication,rehearsal rates rose with increases in initial eventextremity more for women (MLow Extremity�2.89;MModerate Extremity�3.37; MHigh Extremity�5.92)than for men (MLow Extremity�2.89; MModerate

Extremity�3.79; MHigh Extremity�5.31).A second three-way interaction involving the

gender variable also involved initial eventvalence and initial event extremity, F(2, 7549)�4.13, MSE�0.17, pB.01. Follow-up tests sug-gested that, for men, there was a significantinteraction between initial event valence andinitial event extremity, F(2, 2897)�5.44, MSE�0.21, pB.01. The means for this interactionindicate that, for men, rehearsal rates increasedwith event extremity more for positive events(MLow Extremity�0.94; MModerate Extremity�1.34;MHigh Extremity�2.89) than for negative events(MLow Extremity�1.04; MModerate Extremity�1.82;MHigh Extremity�2.16). Rehearsal rates for womendid not evince such fluctuations.

Fading affect

Calculation of fading affect. Fading affect re-flects the decrease in affective intensity promptedby an event from time of occurrence to time ofrecall. Accordingly, a difference score was calcu-lated to reflect this conceptual definition. Thisdifference was calculated by subtracting theemotional intensity rating given to the recalledevent from the emotional intensity rating given tothe event when it was initially experienced (thesigns were reversed for negative events prior tothis subtraction).6 Events initially rated as neutralwere excluded from the analyses.

Variables of interest and subsequent analyses.One primary interest in the current study wasthe examination of possible relations between

6 Preliminary analyses were conducted to ensure that the

effects reported in the article were not caused by differences in

the initial affect ratings provided by participants.

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rehearsal and fading affect. Our interests wereboth at the level of overall rehearsal and at thelevel of the individual rehearsal types. Theregression analyses that were conducted usedthe fading affect difference score as the criterionvariable. We conducted analyses for each of theindividual rehearsal types as well as for overallrehearsal. We also simultaneously entered all fiverehearsal types into a regression analysis to get asense of the extent to which each rehearsal typeuniquely predicted fading affect.7

We also conducted a series of analyses thatexplored possible interactions between the re-hearsal types and the predictors of initial eventvalence, initial event extremity, participantgender, and replication. As described earlier inthis article, these analyses were conducted sothat pure between-participants effects were cal-culated and evaluated against a pure between-participants error term; remaining effects wereevaluated after partitioning out the between-participants variance from the analysis. All ana-lyses were conducted hierarchically, with an initialanalysis examining only main effects, and subse-quent analyses examining two-way interactions(controlling for the main effects) and, later, three-way interactions (controlling for all lower-ordereffects).

Analyses including overall rehearsal rate as apredictor of fading affect. One analysis examinedthe extent to which fading affect was predicted byoverall rehearsal, initial event valence, and initialevent extremity. An increase in the overallrehearsal frequency was related to a decrease infading affect, b��.265, F(1, 1321)�13.16,MSE�1.39, pB.001. However, overall rehearsalfrequency predicted the magnitude of fadingaffect only in the regression analysis that includedthese three predictors. When overall rehearsalfrequency was the sole predictor, its ability to

predict fading affect merely approached signifi-cance, b��.144, F(1, 1324)�3.82, MSE�1.53,pB.10. Thus, overall rehearsal frequency signifi-cantly predicts fading affect only when initialevent valence and initial event extremity are heldconstant.

Initial event valence also predicted the magni-tude of fading affect: Affect faded more fromevent occurrence to event recall for negativeevents (M�1.45) than for positive events (M�0.66), F(1, 1321)�134.48, MSE�1.39, pB.0001.Initial event extremity also predicted fadingaffect, but only through its interaction with theoverall rehearsal rate, F(2, 1300)�7.32, MSE�1.35, pB.0001. Follow-up regression analysesrevealed that the relation between the overallrehearsal rate and fading affect was significantonly for the events that were initially extreme, b��.462, F(1, 661)�23.23, MSE�1.56, pB.0001.

In a final set of analyses, we were interested inwhich of these rehearsal types uniquely predictedfading affect. We simultaneously entered all fiverehearsal types into two regression models (onecontaining initial event valence and extremity andone without those variables). In the analysis thatincluded only the different rehearsal types aspredictors, only the frequency of rehearsal for thepurpose of re-experiencing emotion significantlypredicted fading affect, with more rehearsalpredicting less fading, b��.268, F(1, 1106)�11.17, MSE�1.36, pB.001. However, whenboth initial event valence and initial event ex-tremity were included in the regression analyses,only rehearsals for the purpose of communicatingevents to others significantly predicted fadingaffect. The relation was positive, with greaterrehearsal predicting greater fading, b�.237, F(1,1103)�7.06, MSE�1.23, pB.01.

In a second step, the analysis also looked forevidence of an interaction between social re-hearsal and the initial event valence. The analy-sis simultaneously evaluated all two-wayinteractions between all event rehearsal typesand event valence controlling for all maineffects. The expected interaction between eventvalence and affect fading emerged, F(1, 1097)�12.67, MSE�1.20, pB.001. Prior research(Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Walker, 2004)led to the expectation that when events werepositive, higher social rehearsal rates should beassociated with lower rates of fading. The datayielded an effect in the expected direction, butit was not statistically reliable, b��.06, F(1,397)�0.17, MSE�0.82, p�.69. In comparison,

7 We actually conducted multiple sets of analyses to

examine how rehearsal predicted fading affect. These

included models reflecting separate examinations of the

extent to which each rehearsal type predicted fading affect

without controlling for the other rehearsal types. Other

analyses simultaneously predicted fading affect using the

variables of initial event affect, initial event extremity, and

each rehearsal type. Yet another analysis used a five-level

rehearsal type variable as a predictor of fading affect,

simultaneously entered into a model with initial event affect

and initial event extremity. It is obviously not possible to

report all model variants. We report the results that we believe

most accurately reflect the data. Readers are invited to contact

us to obtain results from the non-reported analyses.

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as expected, for negative events a higher rateof social rehearsal was robustly associated withgreater fading, b�.49, F(1, 460)�9.31, MSE�1.47, pB.01.

A second interaction emerged from the analy-sis of interactions. The relation between theinvoluntary rehearsal rate and the magnitude offading affect also depended on event valence, F(1,1097)�12.67, MSE�1.20, pB.001. Decomposi-tion of the interaction showed that for negativeevents, a higher rate of involuntary rehearsal wasassociated with lower fading of affect, b��.36,F(1, 460)�6.36, MSE�1.47, pB.02. In contrast,for positive events, involuntary rehearsals werenot associated with higher fading, b�.07, F(1,397)�.25, MSE�.82, ns.

DISCUSSION

Review of results and their implications

There are five sets of results emerging from thisstudy that should be highlighted.

Rehearsal types differ in frequency of use. First,the data suggest that people rehearse eventsfor varying reasons, and they do so with differentfrequencies. Rehearsal for the purpose ofsocial communication was the most commonrehearsal type reported by participants. Thisfinding underscores the idea that there is animportant social aspect to autobiographical mem-ory (e.g., Fivush, 1998; Nelson, 1993; Pasupathi,2001; Skowronski & Walker, 2004). However,rehearsal can also occur silently: Involuntaryrehearsal, rehearsal designed to maintain a mem-ory, and rehearsal aimed at re-experiencing theemotion associated with an event were also usedfairly frequently. Finally, relatively few rehearsalswere aimed at understanding an event. The lowfrequency associated with this rehearsal type mayhave reflected the kinds of events that weregenerated by our participants. Many of theseevents had clear-cut implications and did notrequire an extended period of reflection tounderstand those events.

The use of differing rehearsal types varies by anevent’s affective characteristics. For three of thesilent rehearsal types (rehearsal for maintainingmemory, rehearsal for understanding an event,and rehearsal for re-experiencing the emotion ofan event) pleasant events were more likely to berehearsed than unpleasant events. Two of these

outcomes seem relatively straightforward. If oneassumes that people want to remember the goodand forget the bad, it makes sense that rehearsalfor the purpose of maintaining memory shouldfocus on positive events. Similarly, one wouldsurmise that people should more often want tore-experience positive emotions than negativeemotions. Results for the third rehearsal typeare a bit surprising. One might suspect that theneed to understand events might be activatedwhen events are negative, so that these rehearsalsshould be more frequent for negative than forpositive events. Instead, our participants reportedthe opposite. This unexpected result suggests thatpeople have a need to understand positive events,perhaps to replicate past successes in the future.Combined with previous research showing theneed to understand negative events, the results ofthe current study suggest that people have anintrinsic need to understand both positive andnegative life events in order to put them intoa comprehensible life story (e.g., McAdams,2001).

Rehearsal for the purpose of communicatingevents to others did not evince this positivityeffect. This result may seem surprising in light ofthe general emphasis on positivity that charac-terises many social interactions. In this context ofexpected positivity, people who too often speakabout negative events might be perceived asdeviants and receive social approbation. How-ever, one main function of social communicationis to obtain social support in the face of negativelife outcomes. One cannot obtain that supportwithout disclosing negative events that haveoccurred. In addition, one of the social normsthat govern communication is the disclosure ofinformative events. Because they are counter-normative, negative events are often perceived tobe more informative than positive events. Wespeculate that need to be informative and thedesire for social support might help to negate theexpected positivity effect.

Finally, the data showed that involuntaryrehearsals occurred more often for negativeevents than for positive events. This finding isconsistent with much of the research on depres-sion and dysphoria, which suggests that for peoplein these states negative memories often intrudeon other mental operations (e.g., Bernsten, 1998;Walker et al., 2003a). However, this finding isinconsistent with research suggesting that non-depressed people often experience neutral andpositive involuntary memories (Berntsen, 1998;

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Walker et al., 2003a). One explanation for thisconundrum is rooted in methodology. Berntsen’s(1998) studies of involuntary memories used diarymethods, which require participants to keep a‘‘running tab’’ of their involuntary experiences.The current study employed a retrospectivemethod, which might have induced participantsto recall negative involuntary memory experi-ences because they were less common thanpositive involuntary memory experiences.

There is a valence bias in fading affect. Previousresearch using both longitudinal (Walker et al.,1997) and retrospective procedures (Ritchieet al., 2006, 2009; Skowronski et al., 2004; Walkeret al., 2003a, 2003b) indicate that unpleasantemotions associated with events fade faster overtime than pleasant emotions. The present resultsreplicate these findings. The convergence ofresults across these paradigms suggests that thefading affect bias cannot be attributed to aretrospective denigration of past events, butinstead reflects a genuine change in affect overtime. Such results do not preclude the fact thatthe recollection of emotions can be subject todistortion (see Levine & Safer, 2002), but simplyaffirms the notion that emotions do fade overtime, and do so differentially for negative andpositive events.

Given results from other research (Skowronskiet al., 2004), one might have suspected that thefading affect bias might be mediated by overallrehearsal or by a specific rehearsal type. Thispossibility is made more plausible by the fact thatseveral different rehearsal types evinced a posi-tive bias, with rehearsal being more frequent forpositive events than for negative events. How-ever, simultaneous entry of the rehearsal vari-ables and valence into the regression analysesfailed to eliminate the valence effect, suggestingthat the fading affect bias is not totally mediatedby either overall rehearsal or by any specificrehearsal type.

Rehearsal frequency is related to the magnitudeof fading affect. Both the overall rehearsal rateand the rate of rehearsal for the purpose of re-experiencing emotion were negatively related tofading affect: The greater the rehearsal rate, thesmaller the amount of fading affect. However,both of these effects were rendered non-signifi-cant when the regression analyses controlled forthe initial valence and extremity of events. Thisresult suggests that the effects for both of theserehearsal types might be attributed to the fact

that people are more likely to rehearse certaintypes of events (e.g., extremely positive events)than others.

Also theoretically interesting was the interac-tion that emerged between rehearsal for socialcommunication and initial event valence. Theresults suggest that for negative events, increasesin social communication rehearsal rates areassociated with an increase in fading affect. Thisresult supports the idea that talking to othersreduces the sting one feels from negative events.Such results fit in well with the social supportliterature, which argues that discussing eventswith others helps people to overcome the impactof negative life events (e.g., Pennebaker, 1997a,1997b; Pennebaker et al., 1990). However, thedata were different for positive events: As socialcommunication rehearsal increased, affective fad-ing decreased. This result suggests that a conse-quence of social interaction may be to helppeople to keep feeling good about the positiveevents that occur in their lives. This finding isconsistent with the results of our earlier studies,which established a causal linkage between in-creased social rehearsal and these two differingpatterns of relations for event valence and fadingaffect (Skowronski et al., 2004).

Gender influences rehearsal but not fadingaffect. Rehearsal frequency estimates made bymales and females were equivalent for mostrehearsal types. However, averaging across therehearsal types, the event rehearsal frequenciesexhibited by males and females differentiallyvaried by event valence and event extremity.Extreme events were frequently rehearsed withespecially high frequency, but this pattern oc-curred much more strongly for males, particularlywhen the event was positive.

A second finding involving gender showed thatthere were gender differences in the extent towhich event extremity and the different rehearsaltypes predicted rehearsal rates. For some rehear-sal types, such as rehearsal for maintainingmemory, the rehearsal rate rose with increasingevent extremity more for men than for women. Incomparison, for other rehearsal types, such associal communication, rehearsal rates rose withincreases in initial event extremity more forwomen than for men. These gender differencesin rehearsal did not translate into gender differ-ences in fading affect. Such results belie thecommonly held stereotype that females are some-how more ‘‘sensitive’’ or more ‘‘emotional’’ than

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males. Instead, our data suggest that the extent towhich affect fades or is retained across time isvery similar for males and females.

Qualifications and cautions

The data reported in the present paper arecorrelational. While the possible implications forcausality are certainly of theoretical interest,particularly for the possible effects that eventvalence, event extremity, and the different re-hearsal types may have on the affect associatedwith memories, causality cannot be directly in-ferred from these data. Such inferences can onlycome from experiments in which valence, extre-mity, rehearsal frequency, and rehearsal type aredirectly manipulated. In one such experiment(Skowronski et al., 2004, Study 4), participantswere asked to recall several positive and negativeautobiographical events. Subsets of these eventswere randomly selected to be socially rehearsed 0times, 2 times, or 3 times with other participantsin the study. The results were clear: Increasingsocial rehearsals led to an enhanced FAB, withgreater fading for negative emotion and lessfading for positive emotion. This finding bolstersthe argument that the relation between rehearsaland event memory is causal in nature and that thisrelation can be studied in experimental settings.

Similarly, the retrospective nature of the datadescribed in the present article is another sourceof caution. Given that participants made retro-spective judgements about their memory forevents, and that the literature is rife with exam-ples of retrospective bias in memory and judge-ment (Dodson & Schacter, 2001; Ross & Wilson,2002; Anderson, Cohen, & Taylor, 2000), theparticipants’ judgements could be biased. How-ever, given the lack of control that naturallyaccompanies the study of real-world memory, nosingle alternative paradigm will solve these pro-blems: Alternative paradigms simply introduceother potential biases. The solution to this pro-blem is to adopt a multi-method approach to thestudy of autobiographical memories. Such amulti-method approach has characterised muchof our work on autobiographical memory (seeRitchie et al., 2009; Thompson et al., 1996; Walkeret al., 2003b; Skowronski, Walker, & Betz, 2003),and we view this study as another step in a multi-method programme addressing the impact ofrehearsal on autobiographical memory.

Conclusions

This paper began with the observation thatautobiographical events can be rehearsed inmany ways and that different rehearsals canhave consequences for memory and emotion.The results showed that the most commonrehearsal was for social communication, andsocial rehearsal appears to affect positive andnegative events differently: More rehearsal leadsto less affective fading for positive events andmore affective fading for negative events. Theresults also showed that over half of all eventrehearsals occurred in silence, people favouredpositive events for three of the four silentrehearsal types (Maintain memory, Re-experi-ence emotion, Understand event), and onlyinvoluntary rehearsals showed a negativity bias.These findings suggest that when people silentlyand deliberately rehearse their event memories,they tend to focus on positive experiences. Wehope that this research can help to illuminatesome of the various types of autobiographicalrehearsals and the effects that they may have onmemory and emotion.

Manuscript received 24 November 2008

Manuscript accepted 8 June 2009

Frist published online 4 August 2009

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