![]() ![]() However, when their attention and mental focus shifted from thought suppression to other new mental activities, the conscious pursuit of suppressing a thought decreased or stopped, but the monitoring process continued. In these studies, participants knew that their goal was to suppress a thought. In laboratory studies, when a person became sufficiently occupied with other tasks besides trying to suppress an unwanted thought, fewer mental resources were available for the person to attend to his or her operating process. So far, there is nothing ironic about the ironic process theory. If both processes operated harmoniously all of the time, people would be quite proficient at suppressing undesired thoughts. When the monitoring process detects an unwanted thought (e.g., while on a diet, you notice the recurrent mental image of your favorite dessert food), the operating process attempts to replace the unwanted thought with something else (e.g., you try to distract yourself by reading the newspaper). The monitoring process checks for instances of the thought to be suppressed. ![]() In theory, during thought suppression, a person makes a mental note to wait and then see if an uninvited thought recurs. The monitoring process is a less effortful mental process. ![]() The second process is the monitoring process. During ironic processing, another process works in tandem with the operating process. To do this takes mental effort: This is the operating process. To suppress a thought successfully, a person may repeatedly attempt to decrease a thought’s occurrence, ideally, until the thought appears in the mind’s eye no more. In theory, one of the processes occurs when a person deliberately tries to suppress an image or memory from his or her mind. Each process is involved with a specific mental task. The explanation of ironic processes during thought suppression is that a person’s mind simultaneously engages in two distinct processes. Wegner and his colleagues has yielded fundamental and important conclusions. Research on ironic processes by Daniel M. This discussion will return to the white bear later. Yet, the instruction was not to think about the white bear. For some, the image of a white bear appears effortlessly (i.e., pops into mind) others consciously scan memory until a white bear surfaces. To comprehend the instruction, the reader brings to mind an image or memory of a white bear, maybe one that he or she saw at a zoo, read in National Geographic, or saw on the Discovery channel. It is worth noting that the instruction not to think of a white bear is an instruction to suppress a thought. While reading the rest of this brief description about ironic processes, simply follow this basic instruction: Try not to think of a white bear. ![]()
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