The ironic process theory holds that deliberately trying to control the mind can backfire. Trying not to think of something often backfires too.
Rather than successfully suppressing or directing certain thoughts or feelings, we may inadvertently amplify them. This phenomenon isn’t random but is fundamentally rooted in how we exercise mental control.
There are generally two processes at play, as posited by Wegner (1994):
- Controlled (or intentional) process: This is the conscious effort you make to suppress or avoid the unwanted thought. For example, when you try not to think about a white bear, you actively focus on other things to distract yourself.
- Automatic (or ironic) process: This unconscious mechanism checks whether you think about the unwanted thought. The catch is that to check if you’re thinking about, say, a white bear, it has to bring the concept of the white bear to mind. This system, when triggered, can override the intentional operating process (the deliberate, effortful half of mental control described above, which searches for distractions to keep the mind occupied with something else), leading to counterintentional outcomes. Thus, it ironically keeps the unwanted thought in your consciousness.
White Bear Experiment
Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5–13.
The study was designed to examine the nature of thought suppression. Participants were placed in a setting where they were asked to vocalize their immediate thoughts, expressing whatever came to their mind in a free-flowing manner over a set duration.
Instructions:
The participants received a seemingly straightforward directive: they were to avoid thinking about a white bear during this stream-of-consciousness exercise.
To track how often this directive failed, they were provided a bell and instructed to ring it every time they inadvertently thought of the white bear.
Results:
Contrary to what one might expect from such a directive, participants frequently rang the bell, indicating that the thought of the white bear intruded into their consciousness regularly.
A later phase of the study revealed something more striking: a rebound effect. Participants who had first suppressed thoughts of the white bear later thought about it more than a group who had never suppressed it at all.
Implications:
This “White Bear Study” reveals a counterintuitive pattern. Consciously trying to suppress a specific thought can make it more persistent and dominant in the mind.
Instead of achieving the desired outcome of avoiding the thought, the act of suppression appears to amplify its presence, making it more recurrent and noticeable.
Susceptibility to Ironic Effects
The ironic process theory posits that counterintentional (or “ironic”) effects are most prevalent when individuals attempt to control their thoughts under challenging conditions like stress, mental load, or time pressure.
There are two primary ways these ironic effects can manifest (Wegner, 1994):
1. Adverse Conditions
Stressful environments, mental distractions, and time constraints can reduce the mental capacity needed to exercise control.
This diminished capacity makes individuals more susceptible to counterintentional outcomes.
Therapeutic approaches that focus on reducing stress or promoting a peaceful state of mind can decrease the chances of these ironic errors and help individuals align with their true intentions.
2. Intent for Mental Control
Merely having the intention to control one’s thoughts can lead to ironic outcomes. For example, the more one tries not to think about sleep, the more challenging it might become to fall asleep.
Relaxing the effort to control specific thoughts can be a solution in such cases.
However, giving up on mental control is easier said than done, especially when one believes that achieving a certain mental state is crucial.
Resistance to Ironic Effects
To resist ironic effects (where trying not to think about something makes you think about it more), people can:
- Avoid Mental Overload: Keep your mind uncluttered.
- Be Careful with Mental Control: Be deliberate about when and how you try to control your thoughts.
- Automate Thought Processes: Just like how repetitive actions (like typing) become automatic over time, repeated mental practices can become automatic, too. This means they require less conscious effort and might be less prone to errors.
When individuals become overly conscious of these automatic actions, mistakes might increase, potentially because the ironic monitoring process interferes with the previously automatic action.
This monitor works unconsciously. It keeps scanning for the very thought it is meant to suppress.
Thus, instances where individuals “choke under pressure” might be due to the transition from an automatic action to an intentional one, losing the immunity to ironic effects that automaticity provides.
Ultimately, making mental control automatic might increase its effectiveness. For instance, individuals who frequently practice thought suppression could develop such an automatic mechanism that they efficiently suppress thoughts with fewer ironic intrusions.
Similarly, repeated practice in relaxation or mood control might enable individuals to achieve effective self-regulation, bypassing the pitfalls of ironic processes. Some individuals, through consistent practice, might transform mental control activities into habits, exhibiting advanced self-control skills.
Paradoxical Intention
Paradoxical intention is a therapeutic technique developed in the context of logotherapy by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist.
This method involves instructing a patient to intentionally engage in or exaggerate a feared behavior or thought. By doing so, the anxiety produced by the behavior or thought is often reduced or eliminated.
How It Works:
- Confrontation: Instead of running from or fighting against a particular symptom or behavior, the individual is asked to intentionally and willfully engage in it.
- Reduction of Fear: By deliberately engaging in the behavior or thought, the fear or anxiety associated with it can diminish. The paradox is that by trying to experience what we fear, we often lessen the fear itself.
- Humor and Perspective: The exaggeration of the symptom can also make the individual see it in a humorous or absurd light, providing a fresh perspective.
Examples:
- Insomnia: A person who fears not being able to sleep might be asked to try to stay awake as long as possible. By doing so, the pressure and anxiety of trying to sleep are removed, often making it easier for the person to fall asleep.
- Social Anxiety: Someone who fears stuttering in public might be asked to stutter on purpose. This can help the individual confront the fear head-on, realize that the worst-case scenario isn’t as bad as imagined, and diminish the anxiety over time.
But, using this knowledge to trick the ironic process might not always work, especially if one remains aware of the initial intention. More research is needed to understand how people can navigate and mitigate their tendencies toward ironic outcomes.
Implications for Everyday Life and Therapy
The theory and its findings are foundational in psychology. They help explain phenomena from obsessive thoughts and post-traumatic stress disorder to everyday moments, like trying not to think about an embarrassing incident or craving.
The more you try to push the thought away, the more it seems to occupy your mind.
The theory has implications beyond simple thought suppression. It has been used to explain various phenomena such as:
- Rebound effects: After suppressing a thought, it might come back even more strongly when suppression ceases.
- Counterproductive performance in high-pressure situations: Think of the athlete told not to miss the shot. The pressure not to miss can lead to an ironic increase in the likelihood of missing.
- Insomnia: Trying hard not to think about the fact that you can’t sleep can make falling asleep even harder.
There are also implications for therapy. Telling someone not to think about a traumatic event can backfire, increasing their focus on it instead.
Instead, some therapies, like acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), focus on accepting and observing thoughts without judgment rather than trying to suppress them.
Everyday Examples of Ironic Processes
Sleep
Trying too hard to sleep, especially with distractions, can actually keep you awake. On the other hand, trying to stay awake, especially when mentally tired, might make you fall asleep faster.
Telling insomniacs to stay awake can actually help them sleep better. When they stop trying to sleep, it reduces the stress and worry which typically keeps them awake. Conversely, instructing them to sleep quickly can delay sleep onset.
Pain
There’s a debate about which is better for managing pain: distracting from it, or focusing on it. Common advice, like at the dentist’s, favours distraction. Some research suggests otherwise.
Distraction is generally better for short-term, acute pain. For chronic or ongoing pain, focusing on it directly, known as “sensory monitoring,” can work better instead.
The reason is tied to how the mind searches.
When we distract ourselves from pain, the brain keeps checking for anything that isn’t the distraction, including the pain itself. Over time, this can make us feel the pain more.
When we focus on the pain instead, the brain searches for anything but the pain. After a while, we may feel less of it, as the brain turns up other sensations.
Choosing to focus on pain can feel uncomfortable at first.
It can still bring more relief later, because of how the brain reacts. Suppressing pain outright tends to work less well than actively distracting from it.
Cioffi and Holloway (1993) confirmed this directly: people who tried to suppress pain reported feeling more of it than people who distracted themselves instead.
Mood
People often try to control their moods, especially negative ones. Success is often limited under pressure.
Aim: Wegner, Erber and Zanakos (1993) tested whether the ironic-process logic extends from thoughts to moods. They asked whether trying to regulate feelings under cognitive load, a demand on limited mental resources, produces the opposite mood instead. Load was the key manipulation.
Method: participants were asked to change or maintain their mood, for example to feel happy or feel sad. They did this under either high cognitive load, such as rehearsing a nine-digit number, or low load.
Findings: under low load, people could steer their mood as intended. Under high load the attempt backfired. Trying to become happy while burdened made people report more negative affect, and trying to suppress sadness under load made sadness more accessible instead.
Conclusion: emotion regulation follows the same dual-process rule as thought suppression. Load removes the operating process’s counter-pressure, so the mood being fought against surfaces instead.
Additional research into relaxation techniques found similar ironic effects. Attempting relaxation under cognitive load or stress could increase anxiety indicators like skin conductance level (SCL). The relaxation itself became the problem. Trying to relax under stressful conditions ironically raised stress levels instead (Wegner, Broome, & Blumberg, 1997).
These findings might shed light on why people with anxiety disorders, who often possess a heightened motivation to avoid anxious states, continuously experience anxiety. Their frequent attempts at controlling their anxiety, especially under stress, could perpetuate the very states they are trying to escape.
Sources
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Cioffi, D., & Holloway, J. (1993). Delayed costs of suppressed pain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(2), 274–282. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.2.274
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Wegner, D. M., Broome, A., & Blumberg, S. J. (1997). Ironic effects of trying to relax under stress. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 35(1), 11–21. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(96)00078-2
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Wegner, D. M., Schneider, D. J., Carter, S. R., & White, T. L. (1987). Paradoxical effects of thought suppression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53(1), 5–13.
