The Suppression Rebound Effect Could Explain Why Orthodox Jewish Teens Have More Compulsive Sexual Thoughts – And Ultimately Why They Are Less Happy – Than Their Secular Peers

By Christian Jarrett A well-known effect in psychology is that if you try to suppress a thought, ironically this can make the thought all the more salient – known as the “rebound effect“. What are the implications of this effect for highly religious teenagers who have been taught to believe that sexual thoughts are taboo? Before now there has been little research on the rebound effect in this context, but in a recent paper in The Journal of Sex Research, Yaniv Efrati at Beit Berl College, Kfar-Saba, Israel, presents evidence that the rebound effect could explain why orthodox Jewish teens have more compulsive sexual thoughts and fantasies than their secular peers. What’s more, his results suggest this mental dynamic might be responsible for the religious teens’ lower scores on self-reported wellbeing. Three studies involved hundreds of secular Israeli teen volunteers, boys and girls aged 14 to 18, and a similar number of teen orthodox Jews of both sexes, who will have been taught by the religious text the Talmud that “thoughts of transgression are more severe than transgression” – as well as receiving other decrees to avoid impure thoughts and masturbation – and therefore may have learned to try to conceal and suppress their sexual thoughts and feelings out of fear of shame and guilt. True to this prediction, Efrati found that the orthodox Jewish teens tended to score higher on a questionnaire measuring their frequency of compulsive sexu...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Religion Sex Thought Source Type: blogs