title: Unnoticed intrusions: dissociations of meta-consciousness in thought suppression.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660, United States. Electronic address: baird@psych.ucsb.edu.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Baird
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Smallwood
authors.forename: Daniel J F
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Fishman
authors.forename: Michael D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Mrazek
authors.forename: Jonathan W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Schooler
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D012094:Repression, Psychology; D013850:Thinking / Q000502:physiology*; D014473:Unconscious, Psychology; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Consciousness; Experience sampling; Meta-awareness; Mind-wandering; Monitoring; Thought suppression