Actively excluding unwanted memories from awareness, or retrieval suppression, supports mental well-being. Yet how mood states and personality traits influence this process remains unclear. This study uses the Think/No-Think (TNT) paradigm to investigate how suppression of emotional memories is modulated by trait anxiety, state anxiety, subclinical depression, and stress.

Twenty-one participants learned cue–target word pairs of varying emotional valence (neutral, negative, positive) and later either retrieved or suppressed specific targets, followed by the final recall tests. For the behavioral analysis, the final recall test showed significant suppression (reflected in lower recall of to-be-suppressed items), with reliably greater effects for emotional than for neutral items.

As predicted, EEG markers of cognitive control (frontocentral N450 peak) and conscious recollection (left parietal LPP wave, 500–900 ms) showed significant TNT condition effects. No-Think trials elicited a reliably more negative N450 amplitude and shorter latency, with emotional items showing reliably longer latencies compared to neutral items. The LPP mean amplitude was significantly higher in the Think condition.

General linear models and Pearson’s correlations revealed that suppression-induced forgetting depends on emotional valence, and is shaped by negative affect & trait anxiety, and their influence on neural activity.