Ruminative thought and the deactivation of an intention

When do individuals manage to disengage from intentions, when do they fail to do so? It is suggested that a major reason for a failure to disengage lies in a postactional evaluation that goes astray. This is especially likely if the context does not provide cues for other activities. Cues from another activity waiting to be enacted should induce a pressure to terminate the evaluation of the performance of the past activity. They should focus this evaluation on an analysis of elements of the performance rather than self evaluation. If the focus is on self-evaluation, the susceptibility for ruminative thinking increases. In an experiment to test these assumptions, subjects (N=53) worked on an intelligence test task. Half the subjects received failure feedback on all six problems of this task. The other half received no failure feedback. Subjects' thoughts during a waiting period following the intelligence test task were assessed. Before the beginning of the waiting period, half the subjects received cues for another test to follow. The data supported the hypothesis that cues for a new activity help subjects to stop thinking about the first task. Without cues, subjects were susceptible to falling into self-evaluation loops. In this case, subjects were unable to remove the past task from their minds until the end of the waiting period. With cues, the postactional evaluation became task-centered, promoting a disengagement from the past task.