Judgmental Biases Produced by Instructions to Disregard: The (Paradoxical) Case of Emotional Information

Abstract

Two studies examined the consequences of instructing people to ignore emotionally charged information. Hypotheses were examined in the context of simulated juror decision making Results indicate that emotional information is more difficult to ignore than nonemotional information and that efforts to ignore such information can magnify its influence on related judgments. Thus, for participants exposed to emotionally charged incriminating evidence, the impact of this evidence was enhanced by instructions to disregard it. This paradoxical effect of disregard instructions was not observed for participants presented with otherwise equivalent, nonemotional evidence. Findings extend research on thought suppression and social judgment by suggesting that rebound effects may be more pronounced when information is emotional in nature. They also bridge a gap between the two literatures by suggesting that suppression-induced hyper accessibility of thoughts can lead to systematic biases not only in the quantity of cognitive responding but also in the content of judgments.