Motivated Forgetting

Question	Answer
Levinger and Clarke	Participant learned lists of neutral words and emotionally negative words, an associated word was provided for each and they had to recall the word that went with the cue word Fewer associated words were recalled for the emotionally negative words The difficulty recalling these words was taken as an indication of repression
Williams	Womens recall of incidents of child abuse 38% of the women failed to report the abuse even though records show it happened between the ages of 10 months and 12 years old Some failed to recall the events because they have been repressed, the woman may have been embarrassed or too young to remember the events
Dissociative Amnesia	Failure to recall specific unpleasant or traumatic events
Groome and Soureti	Investigate the link between traumatic events and post-traumatic stress disorder Interviewed children 5 months after the Athens earthquake PTSD symptoms were found to be significantly associated with closeness to the epicenter The children with the most frightening experiences were more likely to suffer from anxiety related issues, maybe because they had repressed their experiences
Evaluation	Theory cannot be easily tested Word association tasks are not realistic Williams results may have been other factors Findings are difficult to generalise People do recall unpleasant events Having anxiety isnt necessarily a sign of repression

Resource summary

	Created by Adam O'Rourke over 11 years ago