J M Boden | PubMed Health

PubMed1997

Repressive coping: distraction using pleasant thoughts and memories.

To avoid exposure to unpleasant or unwanted emotional material, some people may distract themselves by summoning up pleasant thoughts such as happy memories. Manipulation of negative affect might therefore result in heightened accessibility of pleasant thoughts and memories, contrary to hypotheses of mood-congruent recall. In Experiment 1, repressors were faster to recall happy memories after watching an unpleasant film than after watching a neutral film. Nonrepressors showed the opposite effect (i.e., mood-congruent memory). In Experiment 2, after an unpleasant film, repressors were faster to recall a happy memory than to recall a sad memory. In Experiment 3, repressors spontaneously generated pleasant thoughts after watching an unpleasant film, whereas nonrepressors did not. Thus, repressors apparently cope with exposure to negative affective material by accessing pleasant thoughts. Results are discussed in terms of cognitive defenses against emotional distress and the associative structure of repression.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed1996

Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: the dark side of high self-esteem.

Conventional wisdom has regarded low self-esteem as an important cause of violence, but the opposite view is theoretically viable. An interdisciplinary review of evidence about aggression, crime, and violence contradicted the view that low self-esteem is an important cause. Instead, violence appears to be most commonly a result of threatened egotism--that is, highly favorable views of self that are disputed by some person or circumstance. Inflated, unstable, or tentative beliefs in the self's superiority may be most prone to encountering threats and hence to causing violence. The mediating process may involve directing anger outward as a way of avoiding a downward revision of the self-concept.

Aggression↗