Nagging, repetitive thoughts are the engine for music like Selena Gomez’s, “Back To You” and movies like Jason Segel’s, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Once the pesky feelings start, they’re hard to stop, and suppressing them just exacerbates the problem.
In a new study, researchers showed that instead of rejecting thoughts after they arrive, we can prevent them from getting there in the first place.
“Reactive control can be particularly problematic because [...] thoughts are self-reinforcing,” says lead author Isaac Fradkin of Hebrew University in Jerusalem in a press release. “However, [...] people can partially preempt this process if they want to ensure that this thought comes to mind as little as possible.”
The researchers tested how people subdue ideas using a word-association task. They gave participants a series of 300 words: 60 unique cues that repeated themselves five times in random order. Respondents then provided a closely associated word, like a ...
