Spontaneous use of focused-distraction decreases intrusive thoughts

Abstract

Previous research has reported that people sometimes try to concentrate their attention on something else to suppress unwanted thoughts. This strategy is called focused-distraction. The purpose of present study was to investigate the effects of focused-distraction on the frequency of intrusive thoughts. Sixteen participants were asked to suppress their thoughts about targets and perform a memory task at the same time, to simply suppress the thoughts, and to think about anything they like. The results showed that participants tried to focus their attention on the memory task in the suppression with memory task condition, and they experienced less intrusive thoughts in the suppression with memory task condition than in the simple suppression condition. These results suggest that focused-distraction is useful for suppressing unwanted thoughts, and people spontaneously use focused-distraction depending on the situation. The necessity of further investigation regarding focused-distraction is discussed.