INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN THE WEGNER REBOUND EFFECT - EVIDENCE FOR A MODERATOR VARIABLE IN THOUGHT REBOUND FOLLOWING THOUGHT SUPPRESSION

Wegner, Schneider, Carter, and White in 1987 found that attempts to su ppress thoughts of a white bear produced even greater preoccupation wi th that stimulus-a rebound effect. This effect was investigated in Exp . 1 using both Wegner's white bear stimulus and a more personally mean ingful stimulus (an upcoming test). The rebound effect was not observe d with either stimulus. Exp. 2 was conducted to examine the hypothesis that this failure to replicate Wegner, et al.'s rebound effect reflec ted individual differences in the respective subject pools. A within-s ubjects design was used to classify subjects as rebounders or nonrebou nders by comparing each subject's expression of a thought following su ppression to their own baseline expression of that thought. Subjects c lassified as rebounders had significantly higher ACT Mathematics subte st scores than did the subjects classified as nonrebounders. This sugg ests that there is a moderator variable related to mathematics ability for the rebound effect.