Affect fades faster for unpleasant events than for pleasant events (e.g., Walker, Vogl, & Thompson, 1997 ), which is referred to as the fading affect bias (FAB; Walker, Skowronski, Gibbons, Vogl, & Thompson, 2003 ). Although research has generally shown that the FAB is a healthy coping mechanism, this same finding has not been demonstrated at a specific level of analysis accounting for particular event types and related individual differences (e.g., Gibbons et al., 2013 ). Given the strong unpleasant emotions associated with death (Rask, Kaunonen, & Paunonen-Ilmonen, 2002 ), the current study examined FAB in the context of death events and participant attitudes toward death. General healthy coping was shown by robust FAB across death and control (i.e., everyday) events and by a negative correlation between negative religious coping and FAB. Although healthy coping at a specific level of analysis was supported by increased FAB for participants who held accepting attitudes toward death when they recalled everyday events, it was not supported by decreased FAB for the same participants when they recalled death events. This effect was mediated by rehearsal ratings, not depression. Implications are discussed.

The fading affect bias (FAB) occurs when unpleasant affect fades faster than pleasant affect. To detect mechanisms that influence the FAB in the context of death, we measured neuroticism, depression, anxiety, negative religious coping, death attitudes, and complicated grief as potential predictors of FAB for unpleasant/death and pleasant events at 2 points in time. The FAB was robust across older and newer events, which supported the mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Unexpectedly, complicated grief positively predicted FAB, and death avoidant attitudes moderated this relation, such that the Initial Event Affect by Grief interaction was only significant at the highest 3 quintiles of death avoidant attitudes. These results were likely due to moderate grief ratings, which were, along with avoidant death attitudes, related to healthy outcomes in past research. These results implicate complicated grief and death avoidant attitudes as resiliency mechanisms that are mobilized during bereavement to minimize its unpleasant effects.

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