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The Derived Generalization of
Thought SuppressionNic Hooper
What is thought suppression?According to Daniel Wegner
‘attempting to banish ones unwanted thoughts’In everyday terms
It is the attempted removal of unwanted thoughts from the mind.
A natural reaction Rachman and Da Silva (1994)
80% of people will attempt to suppress an unwanted thought
History of Thought Suppression‘The topic of controlling unwanted thoughts
has been of interest to psychologists for more than one century’ (Erdelyi, 1993)
However ‘there is good reason to argue that research was invigorated by the thought suppression paradigm which originated from 1987’ (Rassin, 2006)
The thought suppression paradigm found that when asked to suppress a simple thought, participants were unable to do so
Why is thought suppression important?According to Eric Rassin‘the human incapacity to wish away
unwanted thoughts’This incapacity often causes ‘obsession’ with
the thoughtIt has subsequent links with every day
problems and psychological disorders
Why is thought suppression important?(2)Smoking cessation (Toll, Sobell, Sobell & Wagner, 2000) Worrying (Mathews & Milroy, 1993) Stress (Roehrich & Goldman, 1995) Sleep impairment (Ree et al, 2004 ) ASD (Harvey & Bryant, 1998), OCD (Freeston & Ladouceur, 1997), GAD (Beckner et al 1988 ), PTSD (Foa, Steketee & Rothbaum, 1989; Ehlers & Steil,
1995), Specific Phobias (Thorpe & Salkovskis, 1997) Depression (Wegner, 1994)
Why is thought suppression difficult?A few theories have been offered
Psychoanalytic theory (Freud, 1915)Theory of psychological reactance (Brehm,
1966)Self perception Theory (Bem, 1972)
Unfortunately these theories have fallen short both in terms of theory and research
The Environmental Cueing Hypothesis (Wegner,1994)
1. Distraction2. Distraction fails because of a two process theory3. Distraction serves to remind us of the unwanted
thought4. Soon every distracter becomes associated with
the unwanted thought5. Meaning that everything in our environment
reminds us of the unwanted thought
Evidence for the Environmental Cueing Hypothesis
Wegner, Schneider, Carter and White (1987)Wegner, Scheider, Knutson and McMahon
(1991)Muris, Merkelback and De Jong (1993)
All three studies give evidence that the reason participants cannot suppress their thoughts is because the distracters they use eventually remind them of their unwanted thought
Evidence for the Environmental Cueing Hypothesis (2)
But there are problems;The Environmental Cueing Hypothesis leaves a
void in understanding functionally the underlying behavioural processes, essentially
it provides simply a mechanistic and metaphorical account.
One behavioural phenomenon that may provide a more functional approach to
thought suppression is Stimulus Equivalence.
Stimulus EquivalenceThe concept was first introduced by Sidman
(1971)Suggests that people learn by the way they
relate stimuli in their environmentIt is suggested that this is possible via both
directly trained and derived learningThe concept of derived learning might help to
explain the futility associated with thought suppression i.e. It helps to account for the generalisation of suppression attempts.
Taught
Untaught
Symmetry
Symmetry
Transitivity
Combinationof symmetry& transitivity
Reflexivity
Reflexivity Reflexivity
Behavioural explanation of Thought Suppression
People suppress (avoid) unwanted thoughts via distraction
The unwanted thought/ feeling and the distracter become related
So that next time you come across the distracter it is likely to remind of you of the unwanted thought
Additionally the unwanted thought, via derived learning, could become related to an infinite number of untrained stimuli which also serve to cue to unwanted thought.
TaughtUntaught
The Present StudyAim
To find the reason behind unsuccessful thought suppression
HypothesisPeople will not only avoid the suppressed word
but also words that are trained as related to the suppressed word; they do this because those words serve to remind them of the to be suppressed thought.
Methodology1. Screening measures2. Equivalence training and testing3. Five minute suppression phase4 Induction of cognitive load5 Avoidance program
MethodologyEquivalence:
Trains people to relate certain words to each other
3x3 equivalence matrixEnables derived relation to be learnedEnables us to control their learning history in
this context.
MethodologyAvoidance Paradigm
Novel way to study generalizationPeople are asked to suppress unwanted
thoughtWhilst looking at words appearing on a
computer screenThey are told that they are in control of the
program so that if they would like to remove a word then they could do so
The idea is to see if they simply removed the unwanted word, or also the words trained as related to it in the equivalence training!
Control groupIt could be argued that participants removed
related words as an artefact of equivalence and not as an artefact of suppression
To account for this a control group did not receive suppression instructions but were instead asked to remove the word ‘bear’ from the screen
If they too removed the related words then this would nullify the results of the experimental group.
Analysis2x3 Mixed ANOVA
2 (condition; suppress or instruct) x 3 (word type; target, related and non related)
Found a significant main effect f(2,56) = 294.49, p<0.001
Additional T-Tests showed a significant difference between target related and non related
t (14) = -6.73, p<0.0001
Results
Target Trained Derived All other words
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
Lapsed Time
Experi-mental GroupControl Group
Word Types
Milli-seconds
DiscussionWords trained as related to the target word
were removed from the screeni.e. there was a transfer of suppression
functions across equivalence class members
This displays how our previous relational learning can promote the counterproductive nature associated with unsuccessful suppression
This effect did not occur in the control group
ImplicationsThis knowledge of why thought suppression
doesn't work has real life implications;According to RFT (a theory of learning and
language that utilizes derived learning) learning is additive so that it is impossible to undo the relations that have been learned
Suggesting that thought suppression will never work because we’ll never be able to change the vast relational networks we have.
There’s no way to stop the effects but there might be a way to treat it
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
Future ResearchResearch ACTIntegrate aspects of ACT into laboratory
studiesTo find out if Acceptance, instead of
suppression, is a better technique for dealing with unwanted thought and feelings
Thank you