Research reveals how people manage unwanted thoughts
A new study revealed that in trying to avoid an unwanted thought, people often reject and replace it after it occurs. However, proactively avoiding contact can be much more effective and help prevent a repetitive loop of unwanted thoughts.
The results of the study were published in PLOS Computational Biology Isaac Fradkin and The Eldar of Era from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Stopping unwanted repetitive thoughts is a familiar experience for most people. Often a cue can repeatedly trigger unwanted thoughts or memories. Not only do people need to banish unwanted associations from their minds, they need to make sure that these unwanted associations don’t keep coming up again and again in an endless loop and getting stronger and stronger over time.
In a new study, researchers investigated how 80 English-speaking adults came up with new associations with common words. All participants looked at the words on the screen and had to write the word associated with them. People in one group were told in advance that they would not receive monetary bonuses if they repeated the associations, so they chose to suppress the thoughts of their previous words.
For reaction times and how efficient participants were at making new associations, the researchers used computational approaches to model how people avoided repeated associations. They found that most people use reactive control—rejecting unwanted associations once they’ve come to mind. “This type of reactive control can be particularly problematic,” the authors say, “because, as our findings show, thoughts are self-reinforcing: thinking a thought increases the strength of that memory and the likelihood that it will recur. In other words, every time we have to reactively reject an unwanted association , it can become even stronger. Critically, however, we also found that people can partially prevent this process if they want to ensure that this thought occurs as little as possible.”
“Although people couldn’t avoid unwanted thoughts, they could make sure that thinking an unwanted thought didn’t make it more likely that it would occur again,” adds Fradkin. “While the current study focused on neutral associations, future studies should determine whether the findings generalize to negative and personally relevant unwanted thoughts.”
Source: ANI