Unnoticed intrusions: Dissociations of meta-consciousness in thought suppression

• Published in: Consciousness and cognition Vol. 22; no. 3; pp. 1003 - 1012
• Main Authors: Baird, Benjamin, Smallwood, Jonathan, Fishman, Daniel J.F., Mrazek, Michael D., Schooler, Jonathan W.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01-09-2013; Elsevier; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Activity levels. Psychomotricity; Attention - physiology; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition & reasoning; Consciousness; Consciousness - physiology; Experience sampling; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Inhibition (Psychology); Male; Meta-awareness; Mind-wandering; Monitoring; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Repression, Psychology; Thinking - physiology; Thought suppression; Unconscious (Psychology); Vigilance. Attention. Sleep; Young Adult; Thought suppression; Consciousness; Experience sampling; Mind-wandering; Meta-awareness; Monitoring; Experience sampling method; Awareness; Distraction; Cognition; Dissociation; Experimental study
• ISSN: 1053-8100; 1090-2376
• DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2013.06.009

•Previous thought suppression studies required individuals to self-report thoughts.•Research suggests a distinction between thoughts and meta-awareness of thoughts.•Participants were caught thinking about suppression targets by experience sampling.•Unnoticed thoughts of a suppression target had unique cognitive properties.•These data provide new insight into the processes underlying suppression failures.
The current research investigates the interaction between thought suppression and individuals’ explicit awareness of their thoughts. Participants in three experiments attempted to suppress thoughts of a prior romantic relationship and their success at doing so was measured using a combination of self-catching and experience-sampling. In addition to thoughts that individuals spontaneously noticed, individuals were frequently caught engaging in thoughts of their previous partner at experience-sampling probes. Furthermore, probe-caught thoughts were: (i) associated with stronger decoupling of attention from the environment, (ii) more likely to occur under cognitive load, (iii) more frequent for individuals with a desire to reconcile, and (iv) associated with individual differences in the tendency to suppress thoughts. Together, these data suggest that individuals can lack meta-awareness that they have begun to think about a topic they are attempting to suppress, providing novel insight into the cognitive processes that are involved in attempting to control undesired mental states.