Repressors’ True Emotions: Identifying Repressive Coping Style via an Implicit Measure of Emotions

Repressive copers are defined as people who tend to avoid negative/ threatening information automatically (Myers, 2010). Via this process, repressive copers are not consciously aware of their own anxiety (Weinberger et al., 1979). This leads to large-scale implications on all self-report emotion scales’ accuracy. This project was aimed at replicating the foundational study on repressive copers, Weinberger et al (1979), to support the need to account for this population in research. Additionally, since explicit emotional measures are inaccurate for repressive copers this study tested an alternative implicit method of measuring emotions accuracy following a threat manipulation. Weinberger et al (1979) determined that repressive copers were significantly slower when responding to threatening prompts when compared to the other groups, high and low anxious. To replicate this finding, participants were asked to complete a series of neutral and threatening prompts verbally, while under the impression they were being recorded though multiple methods. Following both sets of prompts participants were asked to complete the Implicit Measures of Discrete Emotional States (IMDES). The results of this study failed to replicate Weinberger et al (1979) as there were no group differences in response time difference scores found. There was a main effect of prompt from neutral to threatening prompts. As for the IMDES, group differences were seen in sadness and happiness, which was not in line with the hypothesis. The expected difference in anxiety reporting from neutral to threatening trials was not observed. One limitation to the study was that the trial prompt was not targeted at one clear emotional state. This left the possibility for other emotions to be more salient than expected. The results of this study make it clear that more work needs to be done evaluating previous findings on repressive copers.