Person:

Wegner, Daniel

Suppression is one of various mental control techniques that people may use to manage unwanted thoughts. Evidence suggests that it is at best unsustainable and at worst counterproductive. This leads to the question: If suppression is a futile way to respond to unwanted, intrusive, thoughts, what is a more effective alternative? In the current study, we evaluated the relative effectiveness of suppression and two alternative mental control techniques—focused distraction and acceptance—on the frequency of intrusions and distress associated with them. Results support the claim that suppression is a counterproductive technique for dealing with unwanted, intrusive thoughts in OCD. However, the harmfulness of suppression was reflected primarily in the magnitude of distress and not in intrusion frequency. Focused distraction and acceptance were the more effective techniques for managing clinically significant intrusive thoughts. We discuss implications for the cognitive treatment for OCD.

It has been proposed that inferring personal authorship for an event gives rise to intentional binding, a perceptual illusion in which one's action and inferred effect seem closer in time than they otherwise would (Haggard, Clark, & Kalogeras, 2002). Using a novel, naturalistic paradigm, we conducted two experiments to test this hypothesis and examine the relationship between binding and self-reported authorship. In both experiments, an important authorship indicator - consistency between one's action and a subsequent event - was manipulated, and its effects on binding and self-reported authorship were measured. Results showed that action-event consistency enhanced both binding and self-reported authorship, supporting the hypothesis that binding arises from an inference of authorship. At the same time, evidence for a dissociation emerged, with consistency having a more robust effect on self-reports than on binding. Taken together, these results suggest that binding and self-reports reveal different aspects of the sense of authorship.

Although the suppression of thoughts may seem to be an effective solution, this strategy can lead to an exacerbation of the very thought that one is attempting to suppress. This ironic effect is the most obvious unwanted outcome of suppression and has now been investigated empirically for more than two decades. However, the fact that suppression is an effortful process implies that, even when suppression does not lead to an ironic rebound of the unwanted thought, it puts an insidious cognitive load on the individual attempting to suppress. Moreover, whether or not suppression leads to an exacerbation of the unwanted thought, it is rarely successful, and hence adds to the individual's distress. In this article we describe the phenomenon of suppression and consider how it might complicate a range of emotional disorders. Taken together, studies on thought suppression in psychopathology present a more nuanced picture now than was emerging in the early years of its investigation. Some evidence is consistent with the idea that the counterproductive effects of suppression are causally implicated in the disorder, but for the most part a more parsimonious conclusion is that thought suppression acts as a complication of the disorder. In certain disorders, suppression complicates the disorder by leading to an ironic rebound of the unwanted thoughts. In all disorders, the cost of undertaking suppression is a persistent cognitive load, which, in turn undermines the ability to suppress, and hence sets off a cycle of failed expectations and distress.

Mentalization is the process by which an observer views a target as possessing higher cognitive faculties such as goals, intentions and desires. Mentalization can be assessed using action identification paradigms, in which observers choose mentalistic (goals-focused) or mechanistic (action-focused) descriptions of targets actions. Neural structures that play key roles in inferring goals and intentions from others observed or imagined actions include temporo-parietal junction, ventral premotor cortex and extrastriate body area. We hypothesized that these regions play a role in action identification as well. Data collected using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) confirmed our predictions that activity in ventral premotor cortex and middle temporal gyrus near the extrastriate body area varies both as a function of the valence of the target and the extent to which actions are identified as goal-directed. In addition, the inferior parietal lobule is preferentially engaged when participants identify the actions of mentalized targets. Functional connectivity analyses suggest support from other regions, including the medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala, during mentalization. We found correlations between action identification and Autism Quotient scores, suggesting that understanding the neural correlates of action identification may enhance our understanding of the underpinnings of essential social cognitive processes.

Belief in free will is widespread. The present research considered one reason why people may believe that actions are freely chosen rather than determined: they attribute randomness in behavior to free will. Experiment 1 found that participants who were prompted to perform a random sequence of actions experienced their behavior as more freely chosen than those who were prompted to perform a deterministic sequence. Likewise, Experiment 2 found that, all else equal, the behavior of animated agents was perceived to be more freely chosen if it consisted of a random sequence of actions than if it consisted of a deterministic sequence; this was true even when the degree of randomness in agents’ behavior was largely a product of their environments. Together, these findings suggest that randomness in behavior—one’s own or another’s—can be mistaken for free will.

In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes of mental control. These monitoring processes keep us watchful for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the likelihood of such errors when we attempt to exert control under mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices; production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load is minimized.

It has long been known that psychopathology can influence social perception, but a 2D framework of mind perception provides the opportunity for an integrative understanding of some disorders. We examined the covariation of mind perception with three subclinical syndromes—autism-spectrum disorder, schizotypy, and psychopathy—and found that each presents a unique mind-perception profile. Autism-spectrum disorder involves reduced perception of agency in adult humans. Schizotypy involves increased perception of both agency and experience in entities generally thought to lack minds. Psychopathy involves reduced perception of experience in adult humans, children, and animals. Disorders are differentially linked with the over- or underperception of agency and experience in a way that helps explain their real-world consequences.

An unwanted thought appears to be cued easily by reminders in the environment but often the thought itself seems to cue nothing more than the desire to eliminate it from consciousness. This unusual asymmetry in the way unwanted thoughts are linked to other thoughts was the focus of the present research. Participants who were asked to suppress a thought or to concentrate on it completed a task assessing the influence of priming on reaction time (RT) for word/non-word judgments. Results revealed that suppression under cognitive load produced asymmetric priming: Priming with the associate of a suppressed word speeded RT for the suppressed word, but priming with a suppressed word did not speed RT for associated words. These findings suggest that thought suppression induces an unusual form of cognitive accessibility in which movement of activation toward the suppressed thought from associates is facilitated but movement of activation away from the suppressed thought to associates is undermined.

Six experiments found that manipulations that increase thought speed also yield positive affect. These experiments varied in both the methods used for accelerating thought (i.e., instructions to brainstorm freely, exposure to multiple ideas, encouragement to plagiarize others’ ideas, performance of easy cognitive tasks, narration of a silent video in fast-forward, and experimentally controlled reading speed) and the contents of the thoughts that were induced (from thoughts about money-making schemes to thoughts of five-letter words). The results suggested that effects of thought speed on mood are partially rooted in the subjective experience of thought speed. The results also suggested that these effects can be attributed to the joy-enhancing effects of fast thinking (rather than only to the joy-killing effects of slow thinking). This work is inspired by observations of a link between “racing thoughts” and euphoria in cases of clinical mania, and potential implications of that observed link are discussed.

This study proposes and tests a theoretical model suggesting that the propensity to suppress unwanted thoughts is associated with an increased presence and frequency of self-injurious thoughts and behaviors (SITB). In the model, propensity to suppress unwanted thoughts is hypothesized to be a cognitive mediator of the relationship between emotional reactivity and SITB, and is expected to be related to the extent to which SITB is initiated to escape from aversive emotions. Results of this cross-sectional study of adolescents (N = 87) revealed that the self-reported propensity to suppress unwanted thoughts is associated with the presence and frequency of non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI), suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Furthermore, thought suppression partially mediates the relationship between emotional reactivity and the frequency of NSSI and suicidal ideation. Finally, adolescents with a higher tendency to suppress unwanted thoughts report engaging in NSSI in order to reduce aversive emotions rather than for social communication. Results are discussed within the framework of the negative reinforcement function of SITB.