David Wegner’s famous “White Bear” experiment is arguably one of the most intriguing findings in all of psychology and mental health. He found that when people tried to not think about a certain idea, they actually thought about it more. Researchers assume that this “rebound” after attempting to suppress thoughts also occurs with emotions.
But research never found any rebound effect for emotion suppression.
When Wegner (1987) asked study participants not to think of a “white bear”, he found they thought of the white bear more and were unable to get the idea out of their head. This became known as a “rebound effect” for thoughts.
Many therapists and laypeople alike assert that trying not to feel emotions produces a similar rebound effect. The theory suggests that people “bottle up” negative emotional energy. The emotions then “rebound” and force themselves out in stronger emotions or as unhealthy behaviors. Many directly cite the White Bear study as evidence for how this occurs with emotions.
Contrary to popular belief, extensive research that directly tests the rebound effect for suppressing emotions immediately and after time delays finds no rebound effect. This research finds that suppressing emotion may not work to mask them or feel less emotion. But suppressing emotions does not cause a rebound effect or bottle them up somewhere.
This may be why research finds that catharsis is not effective to “release” negative emotions. Catharsis may even reinforce maladaptive coping.
Surprised? Well, we still don’t know why suppressing thoughts vs emotions has different effects. But thoughts and emotions are different processes, even if they often co-occur and influence each other. It would make sense that they could respond differently to ways humans try to regulate them.
What do studies on emotion suppression find? First, research shows that those with depression and anxiety recover from negative emotion more slowly after they attempt to suppress emotion compared to accepting emotions. Their emotions decrease or abate very slowly, but their emotion doesn’t return more strongly when suppressing.
Research conducted by myself and colleagues later found that those without depression are actually able to experience less anxiety when they attempt to suppress it. However, those with depressive symptoms do not effectively suppress anxiety. Attempting to suppress sadness made no difference whether participants were depressed or not: all recovered normally when attempting to suppress sadness. So the type of emotion and whether someone experiences depression appear to matter for the effects of emotion suppression. But still… there is no emotional rebound.
Emotion suppression research is interesting (though I am biased), but what do they mean for therapy? First, this research suggests we as mental health professionals should consider nuances when we help clients learn to cope with emotion. Suppression is not always effective, but there are some situations in which it is actually helpful. Context is so important in research, so when and how clients use emotion regulation strategies matters.
Clients can learn to anticipate personal and social effects that facilitate attainment of their goals. For example, would expression of anger lead to ostracization in certain situations? And therefore make suppression a helpful tool? Or will expressing emotion effectively help the client make a needed social repair? Such choices are especially helpful to discuss at more advanced levels of therapy. During this time, clients can learn to differentiate when to use many of the coping strategies they learned earlier in therapy.
Although thought suppression and emotion suppression seem to have similar effects, they actually do not. This has important implications for how both therapists and clients understand the complexities of emotion regulation and coping.
