White bear of tolstoy obsessive thoughts and why we can't block them

Tolstoy's white bear refers to a paradox in which certain thoughts charge more strength as they try to stop thinking about them.

This could sound familiar to whom he tries to overcome an addiction, a loving break, or whom he simply wants to start a new food regime to lose weight.

That is to say, The more effort it makes to extract a thought from your mind, this gains more strength and ends up seizing the conscious instance of the person. This is known as Tolstoi's white bear.

Tolstoy's white bear

Tolstoy's bear metaphor arises after an anecdote related by the same Russian writer who said that His brother asked him not to think of white bears to be able to be part of his club.

Unsuccessfully, while León Tolstoi (1828-1910) more tried.

"Stay in the corner until you stop thinking about a white bear"

But where would this terrible paradox have emerged? Well, from another Russian writer named Fiódor Dostoevski (1821-1881), who wrote in his work "Winter notes about summer impressions", the following expression:

"Try to impose the task of not thinking about a polar bear and you will see the damn animal at every minute"

This paradox of the Tolstoi White Bear has since served to refer to those obsessive thoughts that are impossible to block, since when trying to disappear they increase the intensity of their presence.

A classic example of how the paradox of the Tolstoy White Bear has been used in favor of advertising, was in the Seat cars campaign, in which it was sought that the idea or persistent thought be the Seat Ibiza that made its way The market for that time.

Thus, it was tried that the user had in his mind the fixed idea of ​​the red car, so, to achieve repetition, it was mentioned: "So you better don't look at the red car next". 

Daniel Wegner and the Bimodal ironic mental control mechanism

Starting from this paradox of the white bear of Tolstoy, the DR. Wegner (1948-2013) conducted an experiment framed in his research on thought suppression.

So, he asked the participants to, for five minutes, thought out loud and not think about their white bear. If they did, a bell should sound. Of course, this was impossible and the subjects thought of a white bear.

But, the most intriguing is that, after this suppression phase, the subjects were asked to think of a white bear and the result was that the thoughts on the white bear increased, unlike those who had asked them the same, But that had not gone through the suppression phase.

According to Professor Edurne Goikoetxea, from the University of Deusto, the result suggests that when trying a thought, the effect is bouncing, or paradoxical.

The result of this research led Wegner to propose the theory of ironic mental control processes, according to which, when trying to control a thought, two processes are being executed simultaneously.

It is an operational process that aims to execute the change and a monitoring process that verifies if the content of the thought deviates.

According to Werger, operational processes demand more capacity than control processes; so that, If the control capacity is reduced by drugs, stress or extra tasks, then the operational process fails.

That is why, if a person tries to suppress thoughts of sadness to stop feeling sad, these ideas could end up predominate. Similarly, who is under stress trying not to think of white bears, will end up thinking of white bears.

This theory about Tolstoy's white bears too I could explain why there are people who are attracted to the forbidden, or they fail to lose weight, even if it is counting every calorie that ingests.

THE PARADOJA DE ASSO: 4 IMPORTANT POINTS

Bibiography

• Devis, l., & Vicente, J. (2007). Intruder thoughts and memories: the role of individual differences and suppression procedures. University of Valencia.
• Goikoetxea, e. Daydreaming. Department of Psychology. University of Deusto.
• Hernández, a. AND. (2010). Uses of advertising literature/uses of literature in advertising. Think advertising, 4 (2), 141-167.
• Luciano, j. V., & Algarabel, S. Can we control our thoughts?.