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Anxiety and repression in attention and retention
1Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 28223, USA. wsterry@email.uncc.edu
The Journal of General Psychology
|March 15, 2002
Summary
Trait anxiety and repression influence cognitive processing differently. High-anxious individuals struggle with emotional recall, while repressors process emotional stimuli effectively, impacting memory and attention.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Psychology
- Personality Psychology
Background:
- Trait anxiety and repression are key personality dimensions.
- Understanding their impact on cognitive processes is crucial for psychological research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how trait anxiety and repression affect information processing.
- To compare cognitive task performance between high-anxious, low-anxious, and repressor individuals.
Main Methods:
- Utilized the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale and Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale to categorize participants.
- Assessed cognitive performance through three tasks: ambiguous homophone spelling, free association recall, and a working memory task.
Main Results:
- High-anxious participants showed greater sensitivity to negative emotional meanings and poorer recall of emotional associations.
- Repressors detected emotional meanings and retained emotional associations, unlike high-anxious individuals.
- Moderately anxious participants exhibited reduced working memory performance with non-emotional items.
Conclusions:
- Trait anxiety and repression differentially modulate information processing across various cognitive stages.
- Repressors demonstrate sensitivity and retentiveness towards negative emotional stimuli.
- Cognitive differences highlight the complex interplay between personality and emotional information processing.
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