Abstract
This paper reports a test of the hypothesis that individuals utilize the decisionmaking heuristic of availability when they judged the frequency with which they experience various affective states. College students categorized as dysphoric and nondysphoric on the basis of the Beck Depression Inventory judged the frequency with which they experienced each of 20 affects, 10 positive and 10 negative. In the present study, availability was indexed by response time in a memory task in which subjects were asked to recall a personal (autobiographical) memory that they associated with each of the same 20 affective terms. For both groups, availability (response time) was strongly correlated with judged frequency. The groups did differ in their average response time to positive and negative emotions, which suggests that with some refinement the memory task may serve a useful diagnostic function.
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The final manuscript was prepared while the senior author was a visiting scholar at Duke University. He would like to thank David Rubin, Lynn Hasher, and Phil Costanzo for their valued input, and to acknowledge the assistance of associate editor Rick Ingram, which strengthened and clarified the paper.
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Fitzgerald, J.M., Slade, S. & Lawrence, R.H. Memory availability and judged frequency of affect. Cogn Ther Res 12, 379–390 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173305
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173305