The Influence of Emotional Inhibition on Intrusive Thoughts in a Non-Clinical Sample

Given the studies insisting on the impacts of cultural issues on the emotion regulation strategies in eastern cultures and lack of study on the effects of emotional inhibition in our culture, this research aimed to investigate the influences of emotional inhibition on intrusive thoughts in non-clinical sample.
A quasi-experimental design was adopted with 45 participants that were randomly assigned to 2 groups (emotional inhibition and control groups). Participants which were selected according to cluster sampling answered to some questionnaires, including depression, general health, and emotion regulation. Then, a clip and a related instruction were presented for each group. They were asked to perform according to instruction after watching movie and tick on a paper whenever the thoughts of movie come to their mind. Data were analyzed using t test in SPSS-23.
There are not significant differences between groups in terms of mood, emotion regulation, depression, and general health in the pre-test. Similarly, results indicated that there is not a significant differences between groups.
This research showed that the usefulness of emotional inhibition depends on the culture. In fact, in Eastern cultures, using emotion regulation strategies such as suppression and emotional inhibition are common so that avoidance is a short term and useful emotion regulation mechanism.