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