Repression has long been recognized as clinically important (Rappaport, 1942), but often refractory to laboratory research (Erdelyi & Goldberg, 1979; Holmes, 1974). However, recent research (Davis, 1987; Davis & Schwartz, 1987; Hansen & Hansen, 1988b), conceptualized within the framework of theoretical models incorporating the interdependence of cognitive and emotive processes, offers great promise for advancing our understanding of the processes underlying repression. This recent research and our preliminary investigations indicate that representations of negative emotional stimuli are more inaccessible in the structure of repressors' than of nonrepressors' memory. We hypothesize that the architecture of repressive memory is more discrete because the emotive tags associated with repressors' representations are relatively impoverished and, therefore, enter into fewer associative networks of like-tagged memories. This repressive inaccessibility could have profound effects on the cognitive processing of negative emotional stimuli. Because the representations required for their processing are chronically inaccessible, negative stimuli will not be automatically processed by repressors. In consequence, negative emotional stimuli are hypothesized to (a) exert a stronger attractive force on repressors' than nonrepressors' conscious attention and (b) require the allocation of more conscious attentional capacity from repressors than from nonrepressors in order to be consciously processed. Repressors' conscious processing of negative emotional stimuli, therefore, is expected to be less efficient, less elaborative, and more selective. This repressive conscious processing, in turn, is seen as perpetuating the repressive memorial architecture that is at its origin. Eight experiments are proposed to explore aspects of these processes. Two experiments test the attractive force of emotional stimuli on conscious attention and the role of inaccessibility in this process. The remaining six experiments explore the allocation of conscious attentional capacity (Experiment 5) and the efficiency (Experiment 3 and 4), elaboration (Experiment 6 & 7), and selectivity (Experiment 8) of the conscious processing of emotional stimuli. The stimuli used in the proposed research will be facial displays of emotion. For this reason, the research also will generate a wealth of data testing hypotheses about the processing of emotive information available on faces. Conceptual replications, using semantic emotional stimuli and nonemotional stimuli, are incorporated into the research to test the boundaries of any process effects detected. Multiple measures of processing are proposed. These include chronometric, content, and psychophysiological markers of emotion and cognition. Finally, two techniques for identifying repressor and nonrepressors groups will be used. The research, then, will provide some insight into the relative psychometric value of the factor structure produced by both.
| Hansen, C H; Hansen, R D; Shantz, D W (1992) Repression at encoding: discrete appraisals of emotional stimuli. J Pers Soc Psychol 63:1026-35 |
