Long term consequences of suppression of intrusive anxious thoughts and repressive coping

Abstract

The current experiment employed a thought suppression paradigm to investigate whether repressors $(N=40)$ are more skilled in suppressing positive and anxious autobiographical thoughts than low anxious $(N=40)$, high anxious $(N=40)$, and defensive high anxious $(N=40)$ individuals, both immediately and over a longer time period (i.e., 7 days). Regardless of suppression instructions, repressors reported during their lab visit fewer target thoughts for their most anxious events than participants in the other three groups. However, over a 7 days period, repressors showed the highest number of intrusive thoughts about their anxious autobiographical events. Thus, our results demonstrate that repressive coping might be adaptive in the short run, but counterproductive in the long run.

Introduction

The concept of repression was propagated by Freud (1915/1957), who defined it on the one hand as an automatic defense mechanism banning ego-threatening memories or experiences from consciousness, and on the other hand, as an active process, including an intentional turning away (see also Erdelyi, 1990). Over the past century, many experimental studies have addressed the hypothesized features of repression, but none of them succeeded in finding solid evidence for the existence of repression as a fully automatic phenomenon (e.g., Holmes, 1990; McNally, 2003).

According to more recent interpretations, repression can best be considered as a trait, reflecting a habitual style of coping with aversive events. One of the most influential approaches to study repression as a trait was introduced by Weinberger, Schwartz, and Davidson (1979). These authors proposed a fourfold classification of individuals differentiated by their coping styles. According to their classification, individuals are said to have a repressive coping style when they are highly defensive (e.g., high score on the Marlowe–Crowne social desirability scale, MC; Crowne & Marlowe, 1960), but also low in trait anxiety (e.g., low score on the manifest anxiety scale (MAS); Taylor, 1953). These repressors are contrasted with low anxious (low anxiety, low defensiveness), high anxious (high anxiety, low defensiveness), and defensive high anxious (high anxiety, high defensiveness) individuals.

One recurrent research finding is that repressors’ defensive style goes hand in hand with a specific pattern of memory performance. A series of studies indicated that repressors have limited access to their childhood memories, but also to their more recent autobiographical memories. For instance, Myers and co-workers found that, relative to ‘nonrepressors’, repressors recalled significantly fewer negative autobiographical memories and took longer to retrieve such negative memories (Myers & Brewin, 1994; Myers & Derakshan, 2004). There are good reasons to believe that repressors’ coping style is not only associated with poor recall of negative autobiographical memories, but also with poor recall of experimentally presented negative material (e.g., Boden & Baumeister, 1997; Derakshan, Myers, Hansen, & O’Leary, 2004; Myers, Brewin, & Power, 1998).

In a pioneering study, Barnier, Levin, and Maher (2004) used the thought suppression paradigm (Wegner, 1994) to find out if repressors are superior to controls in intentionally suppressing emotional events from their past. The so-called ‘white bear’ studies of Wegner and colleagues (e.g., Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987) yielded extensive evidence for the paradoxical nature of thought suppression. That is, these studies demonstrated that trying not to think about something actually increases the incidence of the unwanted target thoughts, particularly when subsequently mental control (i.e., trying to suppress a particular thought) is voluntarily given up (i.e., a post-suppression rebound). By using this paradigm, Barnier et al. (2004) investigated if repressors’ ability to strategically suppress thoughts of events from their past (proud or embarrassing events) would differ from low anxious, high anxious, and defensive high anxious individuals. During an initial imagining period, participants were instructed to generate a recent proud or embarrassing event. Next, they were instructed either to avoid all thoughts of the target event or given permission to think of anything. Finally, in the expression period, participants were instructed to think of anything. During these periods, participants monitored their target thoughts. Results revealed that, for the proud event, all groups avoided target thoughts when instructed to suppress. However, for the emotionally negative embarrassing event, repressors reported fewer target thoughts than all other groups, even when not instructed to suppress. Moreover, irrespective of the instruction to suppress, repressors failed to show the typical post-suppression rebound effect. These findings suggest that repressors are natural suppressors, who are skilled in avoiding negative thoughts.

One could argue that some avoidance of negative or even trauma-related thoughts may be adaptive, particularly if such avoidance is used in a flexible way and not taken to an extreme (Erdelyi, 1990). When trauma-related thoughts and emotions are too overwhelming, disengaging from one's thoughts and emotions might allow someone to gradually approach these cues. By this view, a repressive coping style may be regarded as an adaptive mechanism to deal with emotionally negative events. On the other hand, there is some evidence that avoidance of negative and trauma-related thoughts and emotions may lead to intrusive thoughts. In their dual presentation theory of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; APA, 1994), Brewin, Joseph, and Dalgleish (1996) argued that individuals who prematurely inhibit the processing of an upsetting event have a tendency to display a repressive coping style. This style would promote PTSD, a condition that is far from adaptive (Rachman, 1994).

So far, no consensus has been reached about the function of avoiding versus attending to negative and trauma-related thoughts. Although a repressive coping style has been found to be related with adverse health outcomes (e.g., Burns, 2000; Myers, 2000a), no study has yet looked at the long term cognitive effects of repressive coping. Thus, it is conceivable that repressive coping is associated with immediate successful suppression (e.g., Barnier et al., 2004), but that in the long run it is contra productive in the sense that it leads to heightened levels of intrusive thoughts about negative target events. The present study aimed at investigating both short and long term effects of repressive coping on the frequency of thoughts about negative autobiographical events. Based on Barnier et al.'s (2004) study, the current experiment investigated thought suppression abilities of repressors, both for positive and negative-self referent material.

In order to relate our experiment to everyday thought control and clinical disorders (Rassin, Merckelbach, & Muris, 2000), we asked participants to recall the most positive event and the most anxious event they experienced during the last years. Unlike Barnier et al. (2004), we did not employ an embarrassing event since it can be assumed that the use of an anxious event comes closer to repressors’ concerns. Moreover, given that emotional (especially negative) thoughts may be more difficult to avoid than neutral thoughts (e.g., Markowitz & Borton, 2002; McNally & Ricciardi, 1996), we used both positive and negative events. These self-relevant emotional autobiographical memories became the target for thought suppression. Note that this self-reference dimension is important in finding differences between repressors and nonrepressors when it concerns negative material (Myers, 2000b). Using a diary method, the long term effects of repressive coping were explored. More specifically, participants recorded the frequency of intrusions about the negative and positive events in the 7 days after the experiment.