How to Think, Say, or Do Precisely the Worst Thing for Any Occasion
Daniel M. Wegner
In slapstick comedy, the worst thing that could happen usually
does: The person with a sore toe manages to stub it, sometimes
twice. Such errors also arise in daily life, and research traces
the tendency to do precisely the worst thing to ironic processes
of mental control
. These monitoring processes keep us watchful
for errors of thought, speech, and action and enable us to avoid
the worst thing in most situations, but they also increase the
likelihood of such errors when we attempt to exert control under
mental load (stress, time pressure, or distraction). Ironic
errors in attention and memory occur with identifiable brain
activity and prompt recurrent unwanted thoughts; attraction
to forbidden desires; expression of objectionable social prejudices;
production of movement errors; and rebounds of negative experiences
such as anxiety, pain, and depression. Such ironies can be overcome
when effective control strategies are deployed and mental load
is minimized.
