Repression and the inaccessibility of affective memories.

Davis, Penelope J.

doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.3.585

Cited by 151 publications

(169 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…6 Although repression has been a difficult phenomenon to demonstrate unequivocally (D. J. Holmes, 1974), a number of recent studies have provided evidence that suggests that motivated forgetting of emotionally significant events does, in fact, occur (e.g., Davis, 1987;Davis & Schwartz, 1987;Hansen & Hansen, 1988). Hansen and Hansen's (1988) data suggest that such effects are especially pronounced for fearrelated memories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values.

Rosenblatt¹,

Greenberg²,

Solomon³

et al. 1989

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1,019

986

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On the basis of terror management theory, it was hypothesized that when mortality is made salient, Ss would respond especially positively toward those who uphold cultural values and especially negatively toward those who violate cultural values. In Experiment I, judges recommended especially harsh bonds for a prostitute when mortality was made salient. Experiment 2 replicated this finding with student Ss and demonstrated that it occurs only among Ss with relatively negative attitudes toward prostitution. Experiment 3 demonstrated that mortality salience also leads to larger reward recommendations for a hero who upheld cultural values. Experiments 4 and 5 showed that the mortality salience effect does not result from heightened self-awareness or physiological arousal. Experiment 6 replicated the punishment effect with a different mortality salience manipulation. Implications for the role of fear of death in social behavior are discussed.Although it is evident that individual behavior is greatly affected by one's culture, relatively little is known about the forces that promote allegiance to particular cultural worldviews. Terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, & Solomon, 1986; press) posits that cultural conceptions of reality serve the vital function of buffering the anxiety that results from awareness of human vulnerability and mortality. Consequently, people are highly motivated to maintain faith in the cultural conceptions of reality to which they subscribe and to defend these conceptions against threats. The purpose of the research reported in this article was to test several hypotheses derived from terror management theory concerning reactions to those who uphold and violate cultural worldviews.Terror management theory is based largely on insights gleaned from Ernest Becker's (1962, 1973, 1975) attempts to synthesize contributions from the various social science disciplines into a coherent conception of human motivation and behavior. According to Becker, sophisticated human intellectual abilities lead to an awareness of human vulnerability and mortality, and this awareness creates the potential for overwhelming terror. As these abilities evolved, cultural worldviews began to emerge. The potential for terror put a press on evolving conceptions of reality such that any worldview that was to surviveWe would like to express our appreciation to Lisa Williams for conducting Experiment 5.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jeff Greenberg, Department of Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721. needed to provide a means of managing this terror. The conception of reality espoused by any given culture is thus the basis of a cultural anxiety-buffer that serves to protect the individual from the anxiety that results from awareness of his or her vulnerability and ultimate mortality.' According to the theory, however, protection from anxiety requires that one achieve a sense of value or self-esteem within the cultural context. This is because the culture promises secu...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values.

Rosenblatt¹,

Greenberg²,

Solomon³

et al. 1989

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

1,019

986

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…These authors regarded repressors as low on anxiety but high in defensiveness and devised a scale to reflect this psychological profile. Weinberger et al's (1979) Repression Scale has been validated in several investigations (Baumeister & Cairns, 1992;Boden & Baumeister, 1997;Davis, 1987;Hansen & Hansen, 1988).…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Are normal narcissists psychologically healthy?: Self-esteem matters.

Sedikides

Rudich

Gregg

et al. 2004

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

601

429

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Five studies established that normal narcissism is correlated with good psychological health. Specifically, narcissism is (a) inversely related to daily sadness and dispositional depression, (b) inversely related to daily and dispositional loneliness, (c) positively related to daily and dispositional subjective well-being as well as couple well-being, (d) inversely related to daily anxiety, and (e) inversely related to dispositional neuroticism. More important, self-esteem fully accounted for the relation between narcissism and psychological health. Thus, narcissism is beneficial for psychological health only insofar as it is associated with high self-esteem. Explanations of the main and mediational findings in terms of response or social desirability biases (e.g., defensiveness, repression, impression management) were ruled out. Supplementary analysis showed that the links among narcissism, self-esteem, and psychological health were preponderantly linear.

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“…Repressors, like avoidants in the Dozier and Kobak (1992) study and like the participants with illusory mental health in the studies by Shedler, Mayman, and Manis (1993) , report low levels of anxiety while demonstrating marked physiological reactivity. They also have difficulty retrieving unpleasant memories ( Davis & Schwartz, 1987 ), as do people with avoidant attachment styles ( Mikulincer and Orbach, 1995 ). Weinberger and his colleagues ( D. Weinberger, 1995 ) have demonstrated a link between repressive coping (particularly suppression of aggressive or angry feelings) and both cholesterol levels and asthma.…”

Section: Defense Against Unpleasant Emotions and Its Physiological Comentioning

confidence: 99%

The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science.

Westen

1998

Psychological Bulletin

342

233

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Although commentators periodically declare that Freud is dead, his repeated burials lie on shaky grounds. Critics typically attack an archaic version of psychodynamic theory that most clinicians similarly consider obsolete. Central to contemporary psychodynamic theory is a series of propositions about (a) unconscious cognitive, affective, and motivational processes; (b) ambivalence and the tendency for affective and motivational dynamics to operate in parallel and produce compromise solutions; (c) the origins of many personality and social dispositions in childhood; (d) mental representations of the self, others, and relationships; and (e) developmental dynamics. An enormous body of research in cognitive, social, developmental, and personality psychology now supports many of these propositions. Freud's scientific legacy has implications for a wide range of domains in psychology, such as integration of affective and motivational constraints into connectionist models in cognitive science.Freud, like Elvis, has been dead for a number of years but continues to be cited with some regularity. Although the majority of clinicians report that they rely to some degree upon psychodynamic 1 principles in their work ( Pope, Tabachnick, & Keith-Spiegel, 1987 ), most researchers consider psychodynamic ideas to be at worst absurd and obsolete and at best irrelevant or of little scientific interest. In the lead article of a recent edition of Psychological Science, Crews (1996) arrived at a conclusion shared by many: " [T]here is literally nothing to be said, scientifically or therapeutically, to the advantage of the entire Freudian system or any of its component dogmas" (p. 63).Despite the explosion of empirical studies of unconscious cognitive processes (see, e.g., Greenwald, 1992 ;Kihlstrom, 1987 ;Schacter, 1992 ), few reference Freud; none cite any contemporary psychodynamic work; and in general, psychodynamic concepts are decreasingly represented in the major psychology journals ( Robins & Craik, 1994 ). The situation is similar in the popular media and in broader intellectual discourse. Publications ranging from Time to the New York Review of Books periodically publish Freud's intellectual obituary, with critics charging that Freud's ideas-such as his dual-instinct theory or his hypotheses about female personality development-are seriously out of date and without scientific merit (e.g., Crews, 1993 ).Many aspects of Freudian theory are indeed out of date, and they should be: Freud died in 1939, and he has been slow to undertake further revisions. His critics, however, are equally behind the times, attacking countenance was last sighted in earnest. Contemporary psychoanalysts and psychodynamic therapists no longer write much about ids and egos, nor do they conceive of treatment for psychological disorders as an archaeological expedition in search of lost memories ( Aron, 1996 ;Gabbard, 1994 ;Horowitz, 1988 ;Kolb, Cooper, & Fishman, 1995 ;Mitchell, 1988 ;Wachtel, 1993 ). People do sometimes describe feelings or behav...

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Repression and the inaccessibility of affective memories.

Cited by 151 publications

References 17 publications

Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values.

Evidence for terror management theory: I. The effects of mortality salience on reactions to those who violate or uphold cultural values.

Are normal narcissists psychologically healthy?: Self-esteem matters.

The scientific legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a psychodynamically informed psychological science.

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