Learning, Remembering, Believing Enhancing Human Performance (1994) / Chapter Skim
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Thought Suppression
Thought Suppression
Pages 277-294
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From page 277... ...
But in terms of the overall topic of enhancing human performance, the key issues for this chapter are research and theory on why people suppress thoughts, how effective thought suppression may be, what later consequences may result from it, and what alternatives exist that may be more effective in the pursuit of freedom from unwanted thoughts. The form of thought suppression considered in this chapter is the intentional avoidance of a thought or category of thoughts: for example, "I don't want to think about food" or "I won't think about my ax-husband." This kind of suppression is distinguished from thought suppression that occurs in the service of intentional attention to something else.
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From page 278... ...
. Studies of the unwanted thoughts of both normal individuals and those diagnosed as having clinically significant obsessions indicate that people have a wide range of reasons to wish their thoughts away (Edwards and Dickerson, 1987; Rachman and de Silva, 1978; Rachman and Hodgson, 1980; Salkovskis and Harrison, 19841.
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From page 279... ...
Thought stopping was introduced as a psychotherapeutic regimen in ~~ ~ -- - ~ ~ - ~~~ ~~~ Although there the contemporary literature by Wolpe and Lazarus (19661. are a number of variations on the technique, in general a therapist recommends that a client suffering from some unwanted thought practice stopping it (usually first with the therapist, then later alone)
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From page 280... ...
Although subjects regularly voiced a plan to distract themselves, and did report intervals of successful absorption in other things, they were incapable of sustaining suppression for very long. The typical participant expressed a replacement thought only to the end of a sentence, paragraph, or some other pause in the flow, and then abruptly signalled the occurrence of a thought about a white bear.
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From page 281... ...
. The results of these investigations support the idea that thought suppression prompts the creation of an automatic cognitive process that searches for the suppression target.
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From page 282... ...
It may be that environmental cues to suppressed thoughts or the tobe-forgotten items play a particularly important role in returning those items to conscious attention. The studies of thought suppression effectiveness generally show that the suppressed thoughts return automatically in response to relevant cues as when, for example, people were cued to think the unwanted thought by the presentation of associated words or by the presentation of the thoughts themselves (Weaner and Erber, 1992; Wegner et al., in press)
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From page 283... ...
This rebound of a suppressed thought was initially observed among subjects who had been asked to suppress the thought of a white bear (Weaner et al., 19879. The subjects individually thought aloud for 5 minutes and rang a bell if the thought of a white bear came to mind during suppression.
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From page 284... ...
The critical feature of such unfocused self-distraction is that it creates associations between the unwanted thought and all the various distracters. If one has focused in turn on a doorknob, the weather, and an intransigent fingernail as distracters from the thought of a white bear, for instance, these items are now likely to be reminders of a white bear, at least more so than the person did before the suppression.
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From page 285... ...
Initially, subjects who were in music-induced positive, negative, or neutral moods were asked to think or not to think about a white bear.; Later, all subjects were asked to think about a white bear for a period, after which they reported their moods. The mood reports showed that subjects who had initially tried to suppress white bear thoughts experienced a reinstatement of the mood state that existed during the initial period of suppression.
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From page 286... ...
It may be that quitting bad habits in residential treatment facilities offers some advantage because the distracters found at the facility will no longer be present to act as reminders when the person returns home and that this counteracts the generalization benefits that accrue from home treatment. Emotion Dishabituation The thought-rebound effect has not yet been observed with emotional thoughts.
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From page 287... ...
Subjects who had previously suppressed the thought of a hot flame showed elevated SCL; those who had not suppressed the thought showed lowered SCLs; those focusing on a cold flame showed no such effect of suppression. These results suggest that trying not to think about a still-desired relationship may prolong emotional responsiveness to thoughts of the relationship (see also Wegner and Zanakos, in press)
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From page 288... ...
The resulting high levels of thought accessibility experienced by these people, then, may actually be caused in part by their attempts at thought suppression. Chronic levels of automatic activation could be produced by the mental control strategies that people use in their attempts to overcome unwanted thoughts of spiders, snakes, public speaking, or a variety of other phobia targets.
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From page 289... ...
on this topic is particularly instructive. He has conducted a series of studies that examine the psychological and health effects of communicating about traumatic events, on the theory that people usually inhibit such disclosure and suppress thoughts about the events and that this produces rumination, chronic physiological activation, and health deterioration.
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From page 290... ...
Even then one may need to duck a few more times in order to get used to it. The process of coming to grips with unwanted thoughts is a similar slow process, seldom a sheer act of will.
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From page 291... ...
On balance, the reversal of thought suppression is untried and highly experimental for other psychological or performance problems, and there is very little evidence at this point to recommend or discourage it. In the struggle against unwanted thoughts of food, for example, the idea that suppression should be stopped appears to indicate that dieting itself should be stopped.
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From page 292... ...
This research indicates that an avoidance strategy is linked to more effective coping just after a stressful event, but that a nonavoidance strategy is associated with more effective coping as time goes on and the event recedes into the past. CONCLUSIONS Research on thought suppression is relatively new to psychology, and large portions of this research have been conducted primarily in the laboratory of one investigator.
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From page 293... ...
For example, encouraging depressed people to dwell on their problems is a technique that has not received enough research attention to allow any evaluation. In the cases of unwanted thoughts about fears or traumas or worries, however, the approach of confronting them may be more beneficial than the approach of trying to suppress them.
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