Research paper
Wegner DM, Schneider DJ, Carter SR 3rd, White TL. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1987;53(1):5-13. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5
Why we cite it
Two laboratory experiments in which undergraduates spoke their stream of consciousness aloud: 34 in the first, 49 analysed in the second. Told not to think of a white bear, they still did, more than once a minute. Those who suppressed first and were then asked to think about the bear mentioned it more than those who thought about it from the start. That is a rebound after suppression, not an increase during it. In the second experiment, people given one specific distracter during suppression, a red Volkswagen, showed a reduced rebound. The link to dieting appears only in the introduction, as the authors’ reading of other work, and was not tested.
Known defects on this page:
- Most reference pages are missing their About the authors section Most of our reference pages leave out the section about who wrote the paper