Concept forwarded by Cleve Backster which holds that there will be a suppression of general reactivity to relevant and comparison questions when the examinee is more concerned that the examiner will ask an unreviewed question about another issue outside the scope of the current examination questions. Though once widely accepted, the available evidence suggests that the effect is negligible or nonexistent. See: Backster, (1964); Capps, Knill, & Evans (1993); Honts, Amato, & Gordon (2000); Krapohl (2001); Matte (2001).
