title: Stress films, emotion, and cognitive response.
abstract: The clinical theory of the repetition compulsion is sometimes taken to mean that neurotic persons, when traumatized, will develop compulsive repetitions of the trauma. Our experiment suggests that there is a more general effect--that various types of persons, after a variety of stressful events, will tend to develop intrusive and stimulus-repetitive thought; the stress itself does not necessarily have to have a negative valence. Equivalent effects were noted after stimuli that aroused  positive emotions and after those stimuli that aroused dysphoric affects.
mesh_terms: D001143:Arousal; D001288:Attention; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003071:Cognition; D004644:Emotions; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D009040:Motion Pictures; D012647:Self-Assessment; D012737:Sex Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological