Anticipated aloneness diminishes high-level reasoning: The cognitive deconstructive state and mood suppression

Abstract

Baumeister, Twenge, & . Nuss (2002) found that participants who anticipate aloneness exhibit deficits in higher level cognitive processes when compared with participants who anticipate physical misfortune, but the participants who anticipate misfortune do not experience these deficits when compared with the participants who anticipate belongingness. No deficits exist when comparing the three groups on low level cognitive tasks. Furthermore, the three groups do not differ in mood ratings on self-reports. A significant difference must exit between anticipating and anticipating misfortune. This difference is that anticipating aloneness removes the fundamental human need to belong, whereas anticipating misfortune does not remove this need (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). Two hypothesis of why only higher level and not lower level processes were affected are presented. First, the cognitive deconstructive state theory proposes that individuals who anticipate aloneness shift to a state of thinking that is characterized by only low level thought processes. Second, the limited resource model of mood suppression proposes that humans have a limited cognitive resource, which they use to control emotions and solve cognitive tasks. Individuals who anticipate aloneness deplete this resource by suppressing their mood, so they have less of this resource available for solving high level cognitive tasks. In this paper, Baumeister et al.'s (2002) experiment will be analyzed and the importance of belongingness, the cognitive deconstructive state theory, and limited resource model of mood suppression will be described in greater detail.