The Effect Of Suppression And The Consequences Of The...

Wegner, Schneider, Carter first studied suppression in 1987, defining it as a conscious effort used to direct attention away from a thought. Controlled research were only conducted after their famous study of the â€Å"white bear†, with most research concluding that suppressive thoughts would actually make these thoughts more invasive. The current essay draws on example from normal and clinical research to show the paradoxical effect of suppression and the resulting detrimental outcomes. In the study of Wegner et al, participants were asked not to think about ‘white bear’ for five minutes. During this time, they were asked to verbalise their thoughts and ring a bell every time they though about a white bear. This was called the â€Å"suppression†¦show more content†¦According to Baumeister et al (1998), these resources are limited and can be depleted temporary. This suggests that those who had been constantly suppressing thoughts, (e.g.) keeping secrets, or suppressing thoughts of a secret relationship, might find additional suppression more difficult. Also, those who had a smaller capacity for ‘active volition’ (Baumeister et al, 1998) would find suppression less effective as they might sustain the exclusion of thoughts or the distraction from the target thought for a shorter period of time. Furthermore, despite obtaining significant results to prove that suppressed thoughts are not at all inhibited, the generalizability of the re sult remained questionable; one could effectively argue that the contradictory effect was provoked by the instruction to ring a bell whenever the target thought occurred. On this note, the paradoxical effects of thought suppression has been found to extend from thoughts of white bears (Wegner et al, 1978), to more realistic conditions, for example the attack of a grizzly bear (Rassin, Merckelbach an Muris, 1997). In the study of Rassin et al, participants were shown a three-minute video clip of a tourist being attacked by a grizzly bear. The video finished by finishing with an ambiguous ending so that participants were left uncertain whether the tourist survived the vigorous attack, it was also recorded deliberately in the form of accidental real-life footage to heighten the emotion impact. By using an