The derived generalization of thought suppression

Abstract

Thought suppression appears to be a relatively ineffective and even counter-productive strategy for dealing with unwanted thoughts. However, the psychological processes responsible for unsuccessful suppression are still underspecified. One process that may be implicated is derived stimulus relations, which may underlie the formation of unintentional relations that act to hamper suppression attempts. To test this prediction, participants were trained and tested for the formation of three derived equivalence relations using a match-to-sample procedure. Subsequently, they were instructed to suppress all thoughts of a particular target word that was a member of one of the three relations and were also allowed to selectively remove words that appeared on a computer screen in front of them by pressing the space bar. Results showed, as predicted, that participants not only removed the to-be-suppressed stimulus, but also removed words in derived relations with that stimulus, thus showing transformation of suppression/interference functions via derived equivalence. The theoretical implications of this demonstration, including its potential as a model for a key psychological process involved in unsuccessful thought suppression, are discussed

Transformation of Thought Suppression Functions Via Same and Opposite Relations

“…For example, in Augustson et al (1997), participants trained to avoid a stimulus correlated with shock also showed avoidance of stimuli in derived equivalence relations with the conditioned stimulus. Hooper et al (2010) demonstrated how the phenomenon of transfer of function through derived equivalence relations could make thought suppression less successful (i.e., as per our discussion above, of relatively shorter duration). These authors referred to the phenomenon whereby certain stimuli could make thought suppression less successful as 'interference' with thought suppression.…”

“…Furthermore, evidence provided by Hooper, Saunders and McHugh (2010) indicates that this phenomenon may play a critically important role in making thought suppression unsuccessful and thus current theories of the latter such as Wegner's ECH need to take it into account.…”

“…The purpose of this study was to extend Hooper et al (2010) by assessing for transfer and transformation of thought suppression interference via same and opposite relations, respectively. In a context in which the psychological functions at issue are thought suppression interference functions, exploring transformation through relations of opposition is particularly interesting.…”

“…Direct and indirect (derived) thought suppression interference was measured by assessing both frequency and latency of word removal and comparisons across different functional categories of word were made in the case of both these variables. As in Hooper et al (2010), latency of word removal was included as an alternative measure of responding that might yield additional information concerning response patterns. Though in Hooper et al no detectable difference was seen between latency and frequency in terms of the broad pattern observed, the latter were analysing derived thought suppression in the context of equivalence only.…”

“…Next the contextual cues thus established were employed to train and test two separate arbitrary relational networks, both involving arbitrary nonsense syllables in both trained and derived same and opposite relations. Then, using a procedure similar to that employed in Hooper et al (2010), participants were required to suppress a target word from one of the two relational networks. In the final phase of the procedure, participants were given the option to remove words that appear on a computer screen.…”