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Imagine a white bear. Think about what it would look like, what it eats, how its fur would feel, its weight, its sharp teeth, and so forth. Now set the timer on your cell phone for one minute and try to stop thinking about that white bear until the alarm sounds. Can you do it? Well, if you are like the participants in a study by Wegner and colleagues, trying NOT to think of the white bear will result in more thoughts of a white bear when compared to a control group that was not asked to stop thinking about it (Koster, Soetens, Braet, & De Raedt, 2008; Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987). The upshot of this is that conscious attempts to control one’s thoughts by avoiding a given topic can lead, ironically, to increased thoughts about that topic. That is, intended thought suppression can lead to apparent thought production. This ironic process of mental control produces the very thoughts or behavior that you are trying not to produce (Miklowitz, Alatiq, Geddes, Goodwin, & Williams, 2010; Wegner et al., 1987).

Try not to think of a gray elephant, and you are more likely to think about a gray elephant. Why? The reason is that two tasks must be performed to effectively suppress a thought or behavior. One is an automatic process that monitors whatever it is that has been deliberately banished from consciousness—the monitoring occurs so that it can warn consciousness that the thought is emerging. The second process is more controlled and involves attempts to distract thoughts away from the undesirable topic toward some competing topic, such as a vision of a bright green parrot. The reason this happens is that the monitoring process requires that you think about the green parrot to be certain that you are not thinking about it. In order to be certain that you are not thinking about something, you need to “check” up on that very thing—to monitor it—to be sure that you are not thinking about it! In a sense these two systems are competing, and the automatic process sometimes will “win” by facilitating the intrusion of the unwanted thoughts into consciousness. Difficulty with thought suppression is particularly likely under conditions of cognitive load, when consciousness is attempting to multitask, such as when you are trying to recite the alphabet backwards or memorize a twelve-digit number (see Figure 4.6) (Miklowitz et al., 2010).

Figure 4.6 Processes of Ironic Control

Source: Adapted from Study 2, Wegner, D. M., Ansfield, M., & Pilloff, D. (1998). The putt and the pendulum: Ironic effects of the mental control of action. Psychological Science, 9, 196–199.

Self-Regulation: The capacity to control one’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior

Willpower: Mental energy needed to change the activities of the self to meet the desired standards

Ironic Process of Mental Control: Trying to control one’s thoughts or behavior in a way that produces the very thoughts or behavior that one is trying to avoid