Marijuana Consumption and Reactions Positively Predict the Fading Affect Bias for Marijuana Events in Person and Online

The fading affect bias (FAB) is the faster fading of unpleasant than pleasant affect, and this effect is positively and negatively related to healthy/adaptive and unhealthy/non-adaptive outcomes, respectively. These findings suggest that the FAB is a form of emotion regulation and general healthy coping. Although Pillersdorf and Scorboria (2019) found a negative relation between the FAB and marijuana consumption, they only examined non-marijuana events, which limited the investigation. The current study examined the relation of the FAB to marijuana consumption measures as well as additional healthy and unhealthy outcome measures across marijuana and non-marijuana events in person (Experiment 1) and online (Experiment 2). Both experiments showed a robust FAB that was positively predicted by healthy variables and negatively predicted by unhealthy variables, and marijuana consumption/effects positively predicted the FAB for marijuana events. In Experiment 2, several healthy and unhealthy variables predicted the FAB more strongly for marijuana events than non-marijuana events, which demonstrated specific healthy coping, and rehearsals partially mediated these complex effects. Implications are discussed.