1
Q
Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White
“Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression”
Aim of Study 1
A
- Thought suppression is difficult for people to do; the conscious avoidance of a thought may be perplexing and even time consuming
- When thoughts can be suppressed, they may return to consciousness with minimal prompting, perhaps to become obsessive preoccupations
2
Q
Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White
“Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression”
Study 1: Method
A
- two conditions: initial suppression condition or initial expression condition
- differend order of experimental tasks: for initial suppression, the subject was first instructed to suppress a thought and then to express it; for initial expression first to express it and then to suppress it
- initial suppression group: should not think of a white bear and every time they say or think about white bear they shall ring the bell on the table; after that they were asked to think of a white bear and again ringing the bell to indicate when the thought of white bear came to mind
- initial expression group: same instructions in reverse order
3
Q
Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White
“Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression”
Study 1: Results
A
- Tokens of thought were more prevalent in the expression period than in the suppression periods, but suppression was never complete
- Tokens of thought more frequent in the expression period following initial suppression than in the initial expression period; similar effect was not observed in the suppression period following initial expression
- > initial suppression appears to produce a rebound effect
4
Q
Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White
“Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression”
Aim of Study 2
A
- Rebound effects should be largely eliminated if the person uses a positive cue for self-distraction during suppression
5
Q
Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White
“Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression”
Study 2: Method
A
- three experimental conditions:
2 exact replications of experiment 1,
3.: identical to the initial suppression condition with the exception that they were asked to distract themselves during initial suppression by means of a single positive cue, the thought of a red Volkswagen
(condition was called focused distraction)
6
Q
Wegner, Schneider, Carter & White
“Paradoxical Effects of Thought Suppression”
Study 2: Results
A
- The overall tendency for white-bear thoughts to occur during suppression was not reliably reduced in the focused-distraction group -> they still kept thinking of a white bear during suppression at a rate equivalent to that of subjects in the other groups
- Rebound effect of experiment 1 was replicated
- Rebound effect in the for thought occurrences was reliably reduced in the focused-distraction group
Articles: Social Behavior
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