[Interindividual differences in priming and memory effects of threatening stimuli: effect of cognitive avoidance and...

This study examined the influence of dispositional coping strategies (cognitive avoidance, vigilance) on priming and memory effects of emotional stimuli. In the first phase of the study participants performed a lexical decision task that involved threat-related and neutral words. Subsequently, a previously unannounced recognition memory test for a subset of the words presented during the first phase was carried out. Repressers (i.e. individuals high in avoidance and low in vigilance) showed stronger emotional priming effects than nonavoiders. Repressers also showed a memory deficit for emotional relative to neutral words, whereas sensitizers (vigilance high, avoidance low) remembered emotional words comparatively well. Results raise the question of whether repressers' memory deficits for threat-related stimuli are actually based on a less differentiated network of emotional information, as assumed by recent theoretical accounts of individual differences in coping.