EXPRESS: Forgetting Bliss or Forgetting Gloom: Emotional Fade and Memory Retention in Episodic Future Thinking

Previous research has found that in healthy individuals, negative emotions fade more quickly in real-life episodic memories, but this phenomenon was not observed in episodic future thinking, nor was valence-related differences found in individuals with anxiety. Experiment 1a compared the sentence completion and experimental recombination paradigms, finding that the sentence completion method elicited future events perceived as more likely to occur and with greater perceived impact, inducing stronger emotions. Experiment 1b used a sentence completion task with a one-month follow-up, but found no significant emotional fading difference between positive and negative future events. Experiment 2a used the open association method to enhance the realism of imagined future events, which evoked stronger emotions and had a larger perceived impact on participants, with a greater probability of occurrence. Experiment 2b used a one-week follow-up with open association, comparing emotional fading in positive and negative future events, and further comparing differences across individuals with varying anxiety levels. The results showed that in the low-anxiety group, negative future events showed greater emotional fading, while no significant emotional fading difference was found in the high-anxiety group.