Unwanted thoughts: this is how they are dealt with

Most people try to avoid thinking about repetitive unwanted thoughts. Sometimes a signal can trigger unwanted ideas or memories over and over again. In addition to getting rid of unwanted thoughts, people need to make sure those thoughts don’t come in a continuous stream. often, people to refuse And to replace an unwanted thought, after it has happened. They do this to prevent it.

In a recent study, researchers analyzed 80 English-speaking people. Everyone had to type the word that appeared on the screen. Based on the response times and the new word associations the participants made, the researchers then used some approaches. They aimed to equalize the way people avoided repeated associations. Here, scientists have found that most people have the reactive control. A method of rejecting unwanted associations after they have already occurred to you.

Scholars conclude:

This type of reactive control can be particularly problematic because, as our results suggest, thoughts are self-reinforcing: thinking a thought increases memory strength and the likelihood of it returning. In other words, when we have to reactively reject an unwanted association, it has the potential to become even stronger. Critically, though, we’ve also found that people can partially anticipate this process if they want to minimize the thought of this thought.

While people can’t avoid unwanted thoughts, they can make sure that thinking about an unwanted thought doesn’t increase the chance that it will come to mind again. While the current study has focused on neutral associations, future studies should show whether our findings generalize to negative and personally relevant unwanted thoughts.

Isaac Fradkin of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel