title: Forget about the future: effects of thought suppression on memory for imaginary emotional episodes.
abstract: Whether intentional suppression of an unpleasant or unwanted memory reduces the ability to recall that memory subsequently is a contested issue in contemporary memory research. Building on findings that similar processes are recruited when individuals remember the past and imagine the future, we measured the effects of thought suppression on memory for imagined future scenarios. Thought suppression reduced the ability to recall emotionally negative scenarios, but not those that were emotionally positive. This finding suggests that intentionally avoiding thoughts about emotionally negative episodes may inhibit representations of those memories, progressively reducing their availability to recall.
authors.affiliation: a Research Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience , School of Psychology, University of Auckland , Auckland , New Zealand.
authors.forename: Nathan A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Ryckman
authors.affiliation: a Research Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience , School of Psychology, University of Auckland , Auckland , New Zealand.
authors.forename: Donna Rose
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6231-1491
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Addis
authors.affiliation: b Department of Philosophy and Brain and Mind Centre , University of Sydney , Sydney , Australia.
authors.forename: Andrew J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Latham
authors.affiliation: a Research Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience , School of Psychology, University of Auckland , Auckland , New Zealand.
authors.forename: Anthony J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Lambert
mesh_terms: D004644:Emotions; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Memory; emotion; forgetting; imagined future events; think/no-think