Christopher Newport University Psychology Department Avenue of the Arts Newport News, VA 23606 United States of America.
Research Article
World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2021, 09(03), 350-362
Article DOI: 10.30574/wjarr.2021.9.3.0109
Received on 14 February 2021; revised on 18 March 2021; accepted on 20 March 2021
The fading affect bias (FAB) is a robust phenomenon where unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect. The FAB is believed to be coping mechanism designed to make life appear pleasant in the face of hardships and adversities. The FAB persists across several cultures and many event types (e.g., alcohol, religious, and death), even though low FAB has been demonstrated for social media events, videogame events, and events labeled as religious, but not spiritual. Although religion is also believed to make life more satisfying by providing existential meaning and social connectedness for their followers, research to date, has not examined religious differences in the FAB. Therefore, we examined the FAB using 2 measures of fading affect across participants’ self-reported religious affiliations and we found robust FAB effects for all categories except for an extremely small sample of Islamic followers. The FAB effects were strongest for Jewish and Buddhist affiliations and they were weakest for participants who did not report a well-known religious affiliation. The findings extend the literature on the FAB to religious belief systems. Future research should replicate the current study, examine the FAB for larger samples of Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews, and test explanations for differential FAB effects across religious affiliations.
Fading affect; Fading affect bias; General healthy coping; Religious affiliations
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Jeffrey A. Gibbons, Sherman A. Lee, Luke P. Fernandez, Emma D. Friedmann, Kaylee D. Harris, Kaylee D. Harris, Hannah E. Brown and Rachel D. Prohaska. The fading affect bias (FAB) is strongest for Jews and Buddhists and weakest for participants without religious affiliations: An exploratory analysis. World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews, 2021, 9(3), 350-362. Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.30574/wjarr.2021.9.3.0109