Why we remember to forget!
Daniel Wegner, psychology professor at Harvard and the founding father of Thought Suppression Research, asked a group of people to continuously describe their thoughts for five minutes, while thinking of a white polar bear. Every time they thought of a polar bear, they were asked to ring a bell.
Wegner then asked a second set of people to specifically not think of a polar bear for the next five minutes. Yet if they thought of it, they were asked to ring a bell.
The second group rang the bell more than the first group did. It’s painfully clear from this research that the mind keeps remembering the very thing it is asked to forget!
Next, Wegner asked the second group to think of the polar bear this time and asked them to ring the bell if they did.
This time the group rang the bell even more than the first group who had been specifically asked to think of the polar bear right from the beginning.
By this Wegner was able to prove that not thinking of something, ironically, made it only more likely that one couldn’t get it out of their mind!
While one part of the brain is obediently shutting out a certain thought, another part of the brain is trying to check in periodically to make sure the thought was being shut out. In the process, we are reminded of the same thing.
Have you noticed how you get irritated humming a certain song the whole day and decide not to, yet keep doing the same thing all day? Now you know why! Drunkards complain that they say ‘No’ to drinks yet the bottle never listens to them. That’s coz one part of the brain keeps checking the other part to see if it’s staying sober.
That is enough for the other part of the brain to be reminded and it screams, ‘Machi, open the bottle’!