Abstract
The hypothesis was that, due to the increased accessibility of material congruent with current mood, mood-congruent thoughts would be more likely to intrude than mood-incongruent thoughts during a period of thought suppression. In Study 1, subjects were led to experience either positive or negative mood and were then asked not to think about either a positive or negative event drawn from their own pasts. As predicted, positive-mood subjects exhibited more intrusions for positive than negative unwanted thoughts, whereas negative-mood subjects exhibited more intrusions for negative than positive unwanted thoughts. These findings were replicated in Study 2 in which dysphoric and nondysphoric subjects suppressed thoughts of an autobiographical event that was either positive or negative. Results are discussed with respect to the relation between mood and cognition, the role of intrusive cognitions in depression, and the relative merits of successful and unsuccessful thought suppression.
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The article is based on portions of a dissertation by Andrew Howell submitted to Concordia University in partial fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The research was conducted while Andrew Howell was holding a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) doctoral fellowship, and was supported by SSHRCC and Fonds pour la Formation de Chercheurs et l'Aide à la Recherche of Quebec (FCAR) research grants to Michael Conway.
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Howell, A., Conway, M. Mood and the suppression of positive and negative self-referent thoughts. Cogn Ther Res 16, 535–555 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01175140
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01175140