PSYC 333 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Affective Forecasting, Word Association, Chocolate Cake

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 333
• Professor: Arash Abizadeh

Document Summary

Goal pursuit: efforts to control our external world. Mental control: efforts to control our internal world. E. g. do not think about chocolate cake, cigarette, etc. Wegner observed that mental control is an ironic process. It requires a state of simultaneously knowing and not knowing something. Thought suppression requires that we identify those threats in our environment and at the same time, keep those things out of our minds. Wegner: attempts to suppress thought actually result in subsequent rebound of those thoughts. When we try to suppress thoughts they become more hyper accessible because of the very process of trying to suppress them. Paradoxical effects of thought suppression (wegner, schneider, carter & white, jpsp, 1987) Had participants complete a stream of consciousness task: verbalize thoughts for 5 minutes. Half were told to suppress a thought for 5 minutes then to express thought (experimental) Half were told to expression a thought for 5 minutes then to suppress thought (control)