Premium
Suppression and Repression to Discrepant Self‐Other Ratings: Relations with Thought Control and Cardiovascular Reactivity
Author(s) -
Davidson Karina W.
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
journal of personality
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.082
H-Index - 144
eISSN - 1467-6494
pISSN - 0022-3506
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1993.tb00786.x
Subject(s) - hostility , psychology , trait , personality , agreeableness , developmental psychology , psychological repression , social psychology , big five personality traits , extraversion and introversion , biochemistry , gene expression , chemistry , computer science , gene , programming language
Individual differences in self‐other disagreement may lap phenomena that have been notoriously difficult to assess. For example, subjects who believe they possess a trait while their acquaintances disagree may be exhibiting suppression. Further, subjects who deny a trait while acquaintances believe it is present may be displaying repression. In the first study, both subjects and their closest friends rated the subject's hostility level. Suppressors and repressors were expected to exhibit enhanced thought control, and indeed these individuals were more able not to think about white bears when instructed to do so than individuals for whom there was high hostility agreement. However, this was also true for those with low hostility agreement. Only suppressors demonstrated blood‐pressure hyperreactivity to a hostility‐provoking task as expected; this finding was replicated in a second study employing a different, multi‐item measure of hostility, as well as a marker of low Agreeableness.