Reconsidering unconscious persistence: Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their indirect expression in later thoughts

Abstract

When we seek to forget unwelcome memories, does the suppressed content still exert an unconscious influence on our thoughts? Although intentionally stopping retrieval of a memory reduces later episodic retention for the suppressed trace, it remains unclear the extent to which suppressed content persists in indirectly influencing mental processes. Here we tested whether inhibitory control processes underlying retrieval suppression alter the influence of a memory’s underlying semantic content on later thought. To achieve this, across two experiments, we tested whether suppressing episodic retrieval of to-be-excluded memories reduced the indirect expression of the unwanted content on an apparently unrelated test of problem solving: the remote associates test (RAT). Experiment 1 found that suppressed content was less likely than unsuppressed content to emerge as solutions to RAT problems. Indeed, suppression abolished evidence of conceptual priming, even when participants reported no awareness of the relationship between the memory and the problem solving tasks. Experiment 2 replicated this effect and also found that directing participants to use explicit memory to solve RAT problems eliminated suppression effects. Experiment 2 thus rules out the possibility that suppression effects reflect contamination by covert explicit retrieval strategies. Together, our results indicate that inhibitory control processes underlying retrieval suppression not only disrupt episodic retention, but also reduce the indirect influence of suppressed semantic content during unrelated thought processes. Considered with other recent demonstrations of implicit suppression effects, these findings indicate that historical assumptions about the persisting influence of suppressed thoughts on mental health require closer empirical scrutiny and need to be reconsidered.

Self-Perceived Mental Health Status, Digital Activity, and Physical Distancing in the Context of Lockdown Versus Not-in-Lockdown Measures in Italy and Croatia: Cross-Sectional Study in the Early Ascending Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic in March 2020

“…Suppression coping with the trauma is commonly reported when it comes to traumatic experiences ( Thompson and Waltz, 2010 ; Mary et al, 2020 ). Some research even suggests that by suppressing unwanted memories, we can reduce their unconscious influence ( Gagnepain et al, 2014 ; Wang et al, 2019 ).…”

Reports of recovered memories of childhood abuse in therapy in France

“…(i) the results are not always replicated (Bulevitch, Roediger, Balota, & Butler, 2006); (ii) it seems that the forgotten words do not manifest and do not affect future thoughts (Wang, Luppi, Fawcett, & Anderson, 2019)-which would be one of psychological consequences repression (Freud, 1915(Freud, , 1966Pennebaker, 1997)-; (iii) there would be no evidence for such suppression-induced forgetting in clinical samples (e.g., PTSD, depression; Stramaccia, Rischer, Fawcett, Benoit, submitted; but see Hulbert & Anderson, 2018, who argued that there are stronger Think/No Think effects in people reporting an experience of trauma); and (iv) the words are forgotten as a result of an instruction from a third party (e.g., experimenter).…”

Resilience after trauma: The role of memory suppression

“…Asking people to suppress awareness of a memory triggered by a reminder cue, without appealing to that memory, can impair its later conscious recall (30,31), unconscious expression (27,32,33), or emotional response (34,35). Memory suppression engages control mechanisms implemented by the frontoparietal network (25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30).…”