Guilt Endures While Anger Fades: Moral Shortcomings of the Fading Affect Bias In Autobiographical Memory

Two studies (Ns ≥ 289) examined autobiographical memories across agent/target roles and moral valence. Contrary to fading affect bias predictions, agent-wrong memories showed heightened negative affect at recall versus occurrence, while target-wrong memories’ negative affect faded as expected. Moral emotions, i.e. guilt/shame, distinguished agent-role transgressions, whereas anger distinguished target-role transgressions.