The emotional intensity associated with an event can change from its occurrence to its recollection. Most commonly, autobiographical memories of negative events decrease in emotional intensity over time (fading affect), but they can also remain the same (fixed affect) or increase in emotional intensity from event occurrence to event recall (flourishing affect). The present study sought to examine whether and how dispositional emotion regulation, specifically cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, relate to the direction (qualitative) and strength (quantitative) of perceived emotional changes in negative autobiographical memories. To this end, a group of younger (18-29 years) and older (60-87 years) adults (N =243) reported a total of 1221 autobiographical memories in response to negative event-cues and completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Gross & John, 2003). Results showed that emotional changes in participants’ negative autobiographical memories were associated with individual levels of, in particular, cognitive reappraisal and, to a lesser extent, expressive suppression. Age interactions indicated that this was predominantly true for younger but not older adults. The findings highlight the value of also considering retroactive, that is, past-oriented, emotion regulation.