On bad mood and white bears: The effects of mood state on ability to suppress unwanted thoughts

Abstract

Does temporary mood influence people's ability to engage in effective thought suppression? Based on past research on mental control and recent work on affective influences on social cognition, this experiment predicted and found that negative mood improved and positive mood impaired people's ability to suppress their thoughts when instructed not to think of a neutral concept, white bears. We also found clear evidence for ironic rebound effects: on a subsequent generative task, intrusions of the suppressed thought were greater in the negative than in the positive mood group. Participants received positive or negative feedback about performance on a supposed creativity task to induce positive or negative moods, and then engaged in two consecutive generative writing tasks, the first accompanied by instructions to suppress thoughts of white bears. Those in a negative group reported fewer “white bear” intrusions when attempting to suppress, but more “white bear” intrusions (an ironic rebound effect) in the subsequent task when the suppression instruction was lifted. The implications of these results for everyday tasks of mental control, and for recent affect–cognition theories are discussed.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for financial support to JPF from the Australian Research Council, the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

We thank Norman Y. M. Chan for his contribution to this study. For information related to this research project see websites at http://forgas.socialpsychology.org and www.psy.unsw.edu.au/Users/JForgas/jforgas. CLW is now at Tulane University, New Orleans.