Dispositional and situational determinants of repression.

This research project posits a model of repression that incorporates both repressive personality and repressive social behavior. The 1st parameter of the model specifies the motivation for repressors' distancing of themselves from emotional events. Experiment 1 demonstrates that repressors are hypersensitive--in their cognitive attention--to both negative and positive emotional events. The 2nd parameter of the model specifies the conditions under which repressors distance themselves from emotional events. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrate that repressors psychologically distance themselves when the situation threatens their self-evaluation and provides opportunity for them to attend to and process self-relevant and non-self-relevant information. This 2-factor model extends the current conceptualization of repression in that it identifies motivation (dispositional emotional sensitivity) and context (situational threats to self-evaluation and distraction availability) for repressors' distancing of themselves from negative and positive emotional events.

Effects of talking about a stressful event on arousal: does what we talk about make a difference?

In Study 1, 30 male and 30 female undergraduates viewed an affect-neutral stimulus and a stress-inducing stimulus. Ss then talked about either their emotional reactions to the stressful stimulus (emotion condition), the sequence of events within it (fact condition), or the sequence of events within the neutral stimulus (distraction condition). Emotion-condition Ss were more autonomically aroused during a 2nd exposure to the stressful stimulus than were fact-condition Ss. In Study 2, 48 hr separated Ss' talking about their 1st exposure to the stressful stimulus from their 2nd exposure to it. Emotion-condition Ss had lower levels of autonomic arousal while viewing the stimulus again and reported more positive affect after watching it than did fact-condition Ss. These results are discussed in the context of cognitive appraisal, perceptual-motor, and self-disclosure views of emotion.

Modeling the relations of attributional style, expectancies, and depression.

Structural modeling techniques were used to assess relations of attributional style, expectancies, and depression. According to an initial theoretical model, attributions are directly related to expectancies, and expectancies are directly related to depression, but attributions are only indirectly related to depression by means of their relation to expectancies. The results of Study 1 indicated that this model was flawed in 2 respects: (a) Attributions for positive and negative events did not form a single latent variable, and (b) attributions for negative events both were indirectly related to depression by means of expectancies and were directly related to depression. Attributions for positive events only were indirectly related to depression by means of expectancies. The model derived in Study 1 was replicated in Study 2. Discussion centers on the interpretation of this modified model and on issues in the measurement of attributional style.