Initial evidence suggests that suppressing a thought prior to sleep results in subsequent dreaming of that thought. The present research examined the influence of cognitive load on dreaming following suppression. In Experiment 1, 100 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and subsequently completed a dream diary. Participants instructed to suppress reported dreaming about the target thought more than controls; dream rebound was predicted by poorer performance on a working memory task. (...) In Experiment 2, 126 participants received either a suppression instruction or no instruction for an intrusive thought prior to sleep, and half of participants also had cognitive load of learning a 9-digit number. Participants receiving the suppression instruction under cognitive load reported greater dream rebound than other participants. These findings indicate that thought suppression prior to sleep leads to dream rebound, and this effect is enhanced by cognitive load. (shrink)

Although thought suppression is a commonly used self-control strategy that has far-reaching consequences, its effect on ethical decision making is unclear. Whereas ironic process theory suggests that suppressing ethics-related thoughts leads to mental rebounds of ethicality and decreased unethical behavior, ego depletion theory suggests that thought suppression can lead to reduced self-control and increased unethical behavior. Integrating the two theories, I propose that the effect of thought suppression on unethical behavior hinges on the content of the suppressed thoughts. Participants who (...) suppressed ethics-related [-unrelated] thoughts engaged in less [more] cyber bullying, cheating, and dishonesty compared to participants in the control conditions. Explicit and implicit moral awareness was found to mediate this moderated effect. Experiment 4 further demonstrated that suppressing ethics-related thoughts reduces self-control performance on a subsequent amoral task, but not on subsequent ethical decision making. (shrink)

Participants were asked to carry out a series of simple tasks while following mental control instructions. In advance of each task, they either suppressed thoughts of their intention to perform the task, concentrated on such thoughts, or monitored their thoughts without trying to change them. Suppression resulted in reduced reports of intentionality as compared to monitoring, and as compared to concentration. There was a weak trend for suppression to enhance reported intentionality for a repetition of the action carried out after (...) suppression instructions had been discontinued. (shrink)

An unwanted thought appears to be cued easily by reminders in the environment but often the thought itself seems to cue nothing more than the desire to eliminate it from consciousness. This unusual asymmetry in the way unwanted thoughts are linked to other thoughts was the focus of the present research. Participants who were asked to suppress a thought or to concentrate on it completed a task assessing the influence of priming on reaction time for word/non-word judgments. Results revealed that (...) suppression under cognitive load produced asymmetric priming: Priming with the associate of a suppressed word speeded RT for the suppressed word, but priming with a suppressed word did not speed RT for associated words. These findings suggest that thought suppression induces an unusual form of cognitive accessibility in which movement of activation toward the suppressed thought from associates is facilitated but movement of activation away from the suppressed thought to associates is undermined. (shrink)

The present study examined the effects of thought suppression on sleep-onset mentation. It was hypothesized that the decrease of attentional control in the transition to sleep would lead to a rebound of a suppressed thought in hypnagogic mentation. Twenty-four young adults spent two consecutive nights in a sleep laboratory. Half of the participants were instructed to suppress a target thought, whereas the other half freely thought of anything at all. To assess target thought frequency, three different measures were used in (...) the wake state and mentation reports were repeatedly prompted by a computer at sleep onset. In support of the hypothesis, results revealed a reversal of target thought frequency at sleep onset: Participants instructed to suppress reported fewer target thoughts than did controls before falling asleep, but more target thoughts afterwards. (shrink)

It is hard to provide an unequivocal answer to the question of whether or not thought suppression is effective. Two thought suppression paradigms - the “white bear” paradigm and the think/no-think paradigm - give mixed results. Generally, “white bear” experiments indicate that thought suppression is counterproductive, while experiments in the think/no-think paradigm suggest that it is possible to effectively suppress a thought. There are also alternative methods used to study thought suppression, for instance the directed forgetting paradigm or the Stroop (...) task. In the article, I describe the research methods used to explore thought suppression efficacy. I focus on the “white bear” and the think/no-think paradigms and discuss theories proposed to explain the results obtained. I also consider the internal and external validity of the methods used. (shrink)

Although rituals are believed to lower anxiety, the underlying mechanism of anxiety reduction has not been explained well enough. According to Boyer and Liénard (2006), ritualized behavior decreases the anxiety levels because it swamps working memory. This blocks anxious thoughts’ access to consciousness. As a result, ritualized behavior lowers anxiety temporarily but maintains it in the long run. In the article, I analyze what processes should be engaged in ritualized behavior to bring the aforementioned outcomes. I propose that ritualized behavior (...) has anxiolytic properties if it preoccupies consciousness without placing too many demands on cognitive control. While conscious preoccupation with ritualized behavior should reduce anxiety, cognitive control load related to efforts to concentrate on ritualized behavior may bring immediate paradoxical effects of self-regulation, i.e., anxiety increases. Moreover, since anxiety disrupts attentional control capabilities, ritualized behavior should not be too cognitively demanding if an anxious person is to perform it. (shrink)

Retrieval Induced Forgetting refers to the finding that the retrieval of some items from memory impairs the retrieval of related items. The RIF effect is indicated by a comparison of RP- with unrelated but also tobe- remembered items. Since RIF appears during intentional memorizing of words, therefore we checked whether it depends on attentional control involved in goal maintenance, and also if implicit evaluations of to-be-remembered contents moderate this process. In three experiments, each including AC as the independent variable, we (...) found AC to be related to the RIF effect. Only high but not low AC subjects showed the presence of RIF. The results of the affective priming procedure showed that implicit evaluations of NRP items moderate the relationship of high AC and the RIF effect. The explanation why temporarily devaluated NRP could enhance the RIF effect and suggestion concerning future research summarize the article. (shrink)

This research examined the role of thought suppression in the formation of mental blocks. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to generate a series of creative associates for two target words after initially suppressing a word that was semantically related to one of the two target words. Participants produced fewer responses, and experienced a greater sensation of being mentally blocked, when attempting to produce associates for the target word that was semantically related to the suppressed word. In Experiment 2, participants (...) either thought about or suppressed a series of words prior to completing a word fragment completion task. Each word either corresponded exactly to one of the word fragment solutions or resembled one of the solutions but was slightly different in its orthographic properties . Participants performed most poorly on the items for which they had initially suppressed negative primes. (shrink)

This study examined the effects of post-cue interval and cognitive load on item-method directed forgetting. The results of Experiment 1 and Experiment 2 showed that forget item retention increased as the post-cue interval increased. Moreover, increasing the cognitive load of participants by asking them to perform a secondary counting task did not impair, but rather facilitated, the intentional forgetting of the studied item under long post-cue interval conditions. These results and analyses of recall gains from the additional use of the (...) independent cue suggest that the improved recall of forget items caused by an increase in the post-cue interval came from an automatic process, and that after receiving the forget cue, participants did not engage a suppression operation that was resource-demanded. The current findings suggest that forgetting is more effective when participants perform a secondary task after receiving the forget cue. (shrink)

This theoretical paper examines the context-sensitivity of the impact of cultural norms on prejudice regulation. Granting the importance of understanding intergroup dynamics in cultural-ecological contexts, we focus on the peculiarities of the French diversity approach. Indeed, the major cultural norm, the Laïcité is declined today in two main variants: The Historic Laïcité, a longstanding egalitarian norm coexisting with its amended form: The New Laïcité, an assimilationist norm. In fact, these co-encapsulated Laïcité variants constitute a fruitful ground to cast light on (...) the processes underlying prejudice regulation. Indeed, it is documented that the assimilationist New Laïcité is linked to higher levels of prejudice as compared to the egalitarian Historic Laïcité. To this day, research mainly explored interindividual determinants of Laïcité endorsements and specified how these endorsements shape prejudice. Crucially, this “indirect-endorsement path” does not account for the more straightforward causal relationship between Laïcité and prejudice. Moreover, recent experimental evidence suggests that the normative salience of both Laïcité norms shape intergroup attitudes beyond personal endorsement. Therefore, in this contribution, we complement previous work by investigating the possible socio-cognitive processes driving this “direct-contextual path.” In doing so, we seek to bridge the gap of causality by investigating how the Laïcité norms can set the stage for specific regulatory strategies. Our reasoning derives from an application of the Justification-Suppression Model bolstered by classical work on mental control, modern racism and diversity ideology. From this, we sketch out the operative functioning of two distinct regulation processes: one that prevents prejudicial attitudes but which can have unexpected consequences on stereotyping within the Historic Laïcité context and one that helps realize prejudice within the New Laïcité context. From this analysis, we discuss the consequences for intergroup relations within and beyond the French context. In particular, we outline the importance of an adequate framing of egalitarian ideologies so that they achieve their goal to foster harmonious intergroup relations. (shrink)

The paper delineates a study of executive functions, construed as procedural working memory, from a motivational perspective. Since WM theories and motivation theories are both concerned with purposive activity, the role of implicit evaluations observed in goal pursuit can be anticipated to arise also in the context of cognitive control, e.g., during the performance of the Stroop task. The role of positive and negative affect in goal pursuit consists in controlling attention resources according to the goal and situational requirements. Positive (...) affect serves to maintain goals and means in the scope of attention, whereas negative affect activates the inhibition of non-functional contents, e.g., distractors and irrelevant objects. Adaptation to conflict proceeds via sequential triggering of negative and positive affect. Moreover, it was demonstrated that the focus on action or reflection changes the scope of contents subjected to implicit control. Therefore, I suggest that the motivational system, to a large extent, plays the role of the Central Executive. The paper opens a discussion and proposes studies on affective mechanisms of cognitive control. (shrink)

Repression has become an empirical fact that is at once obvious and problematic. Fragmented clinical and laboratory traditions and disputed terminology have resulted in a Babel of misunderstandings in which false distinctions are imposed (e.g., between repression and suppression) and necessary distinctions not drawn (e.g., between the mechanism and the use to which it is put, defense being just one). “Repression” was introduced by Herbart to designate the (nondefensive) inhibition of ideas by other ideas in their struggle for consciousness. Freud (...) adapted repression to the defensive inhibition of “unbearable” mental contents. Substantial experimental literatures on attentional biases, thought avoidance, interference, and intentional forgetting exist, the oldest prototype being the work of Ebbinghaus, who showed that intentional avoidance of memories results in their progressive forgetting over time. It has now become clear, as clinicians had claimed, that the inaccessible materials are often available and emerge indirectly (e.g., procedurally, implicitly). It is also now established that the Ebbinghaus retention function can be partly reversed, with resulting increases of conscious memory over time (hypermnesia). Freud's clinical experience revealed early on that exclusion from consciousness was effected not just by simple repression (inhibition) but also by a variety of distorting techniques, some deployed to degrade latent contents (denial), all eventually subsumed under the rubric of defense mechanisms (“repression in the widest sense”). Freudian and Bartlettian distortions are essentially the same, even in name, except for motive (cognitive vs. emotional), and experimentally induced false memories and other “memory illusions” are laboratory analogs of self-induced distortions. Key Words: avoidance; Bartlett; defense; denial; distortion; Ebbinghaus; false-memories; Freud; inhibition; repression; suppression. (shrink)

The current research investigates the interaction between thought suppression and individuals’ explicit awareness of their thoughts. Participants in three experiments attempted to suppress thoughts of a prior romantic relationship and their success at doing so was measured using a combination of self-catching and experience-sampling. In addition to thoughts that individuals spontaneously noticed, individuals were frequently caught engaging in thoughts of their previous partner at experience-sampling probes. Furthermore, probe-caught thoughts were: associated with stronger decoupling of attention from the environment, more likely (...) to occur under cognitive load, more frequent for individuals with a desire to reconcile, and associated with individual differences in the tendency to suppress thoughts. Together, these data suggest that individuals can lack meta-awareness that they have begun to think about a topic they are attempting to suppress, providing novel insight into the cognitive processes that are involved in attempting to control undesired mental states. (shrink)

Directed forgetting is a successful method for thought control whereas thought suppression is notoriously ineffective. We tested a specific hypothesis about what difference between the two paradigms causes the difference in outcomes. Both paradigms instruct participants to suppress certain thoughts, but in thought suppression experiments participants are also told to report intrusions of unwanted thoughts. We added a condition to the typical directed forgetting experiment that instructed participants to report intrusions. When participants tried to forget a word list but also (...) reported intrusions, forgetting did not occur. The results are important for understanding control of conscious contents and have implications for practicable applications of individual thought control. (shrink)