Intertwined with those characteristics is a peculiar lack of emotional expression. The tests reveal how repressive people “inhibit negative affect”—no expressing of those messy, complicated emotions for them, and little recognition of those complications in others. For example, ask repressors and non-repressors to recall an experience associated with a specific strong emotion. Both groups report that particular emotion with equal intensity. However, when asked what else they were feeling, non-repressors typically report an array of additional, nondominant feelings: “Well, it mostly made me
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