Ignorance may be bliss, but thought suppression promotes superficial cognitive processing

This study examined the impact of thought suppression on the quality of cognitive processing and self-reported mood, While completing a stream-of-consciousness task about two topics sequentially, participants were either instructed to suppress negative thoughts or were given no suppression instructions. Computer-based content analyses indicated that thought suppression led to significantly less causal reasoning and discrepancy seeking. However, the suppression of negative thoughts also resulted in a more positive mood. Results suggest that thought suppression can improve mood but it comes with the cognitive cost of superficial processing. (C) 2001 Academic Press.