The "memory-experience gap" for affect does not reflect a general memory bias to overestimate past affect.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Cognitive Science
• Affective Science

Background:

• Retrospective self-reports are common for measuring affect and well-being.
• A long-held assumption is that these reports are biased due to overestimation of past experiences, known as the memory-experience gap.
• This gap, where longer timeframe ratings exceed averaged shorter timeframe ratings, underpins theories of memory bias.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether the memory-experience gap reflects a genuine memory bias or a difference in temporal summarization.
• To disentangle the effects of memory recall from the process of summarizing affect over varying durations.

Main Methods:

• An online study with 399 participants measured affect over several timeframes within a week.
• Participants provided both real-time daily affect ratings and retrospective memory-based ratings for the same periods.
• Affect was assessed for both positive and negative emotional states.

Main Results:

• The study confirmed the memory-experience gap, with longer timeframes (e.g., 1 week) rated higher than averaged daily ratings.
• Crucially, retrospective memory-based daily ratings were *lower* than the actual daily ratings given during the week.
• This finding indicates that memory-based ratings move in the opposite direction of the observed memory-experience gap.

Conclusions:

• The assumption that the memory-experience gap reflects a memory bias in retrospective self-reports is questioned.
• The discrepancy may be better explained by how individuals summarize affect across different temporal scales.
• Further research is needed to test generalizability across diverse methodologies, constructs, and populations.