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Contrasting the ironic monitoring and motivational explanations of postsuppressional rebound

journal contribution
posted on 2002-01-01, 00:00 authored by Peter EnticottPeter Enticott, Ron Gold
Suppressing a thought often results in postsuppressional rebound, that is, a subsequent increase in the incidence of the suppressed thought. The present study was dcsigned to distinguish between two explanations of rebound: Wegner's 1994 ironic monitoring theory and Liberman and Forster's 2000 motivational account. Participants (99 Deakin University students) first suppressed, then expressed, thoughts of a white bear. In some conditions, a delay--presented as occurring either intentionally or unintentionally--between suppression and expression was introduced. In other conditions, participants concurrently completed a memory task and were encouraged to antribute the difficulty of suppression either to this task or to the requirement of suppression. An intentional delay, but not an unintentional delay, reduced rebound, while attributing difficulty to the suppression requirement was associated with greater rebound than was attributing it to the memory task. The results are interpreted as supporting Liberman and Forster's motivational account of rebound.

History

Journal

Psychological reports

Volume

90

Issue

2

Pagination

447 - 450

Publisher

Ammons Scientific Ltd.

Location

Missoula, Mont.

ISSN

0033-2941

eISSN

1558-691X

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2002, Ammons Scientific Ltd.

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