When individuals are informed not to consider a pink elephant, these with extra vivid visible imaginations discover it tough to conform. Credit score: Loren Bouyer, CC BY-SA
“Tell a man he shouldn’t think of a pink elephant and he can’t get that beast out of his mind!”
This quote, from Curt Siodmak’s 1974 novel “City in the Sky,” describes how laborious it may be to suppress our ideas. “Don’t think of a pink elephant” has turn out to be a basic instance of how tough it may be to deliberately keep away from visualizing.
Analysis suggests a lot of you, having examine a pink elephant, may have imagined seeing one.
Nonetheless, some individuals, like us, have aphantasia—we can’t visualize. So we’re slightly confused at the concept that different individuals can think about seeing issues that are not there.
In a brand new examine, now we have discovered proof the pink elephant drawback is just not common. Some individuals—together with individuals with aphantasia—can block involuntary visible ideas from their minds.
What’s aphantasia?
Individuals with aphantasia can’t voluntarily think about seeing issues in our thoughts’s eye. So for those who ask us not to consider a pink elephant, we can’t visualize one, as a result of we won’t.
Aphantasia is usually described as a deficit. When individuals first study they’ve aphantasia they’re usually upset, as they understand different individuals can do issues they can not. It could be good to think about seeing the characters described in a guide, for instance, or to visualise an absent beloved one.
Nonetheless, deficits are sometimes balanced by advantages. There are strategies individuals with aphantasia (or aphantasics, as we’re typically referred to as) might have a heightened resistance to involuntary intrusive ideas.
One other manner to take a look at it’s that aphantasics are one portion of a pure variety of human minds, with individuals having completely different capacities to visualise. The place aphantasics haven’t any capability, most individuals would have a median means, and a small variety of individuals would have a particularly sturdy means to visualise.
Vivid psychological imagery and involuntary visualizations
In our new examine, we checked out hyperlinks between the depth of individuals’s visible imaginations and their tendency to visualise, even after they attempt to not. Individuals with vivid visible imaginations had been extra prone to have involuntary visualizations, and we may predict these outcomes by measuring mind exercise.
Some individuals may take pleasure in with the ability to think about seeing detailed scenes every time they want. Nonetheless, this appears to come back at the price of not with the ability to shut down these experiences.
Most individuals have much less vibrant imagery, however they appear to be extra capable of suppress these ideas.
Do aphantasics have peaceable minds?
Aphantasics are unlikely to have involuntary visualizations. Does that imply they’ve peaceable minds?
In our examine, individuals who reported having weak imagery had been much less prone to think about seeing issues they had been attempting not to consider. Nonetheless, they had been extra prone to report mind-wandering.
If this describes aphantasics, as a substitute of visualizing issues we’re informed not to consider, we might flip our minds to different ideas, similar to what’s for dinner. So we’d not have extra peaceable minds, only a resistance to consider issues we try to place out of thoughts.
If aphantasics don’t visualize, have they got daydreams?
From our personal expertise, we are able to affirm a minimum of some aphantasics have minds that wander. However when our minds wander, neither of us imagines seeing issues. Our experiences are completely different.
When Derek’s thoughts wanders, he imagines listening to and interesting in purely audio conversations. As daydreaming is usually related to imaginative and prescient, he didn’t understand till very not too long ago these imagined conversations may very well be described as his expertise of daydreaming.
Loren can’t visualize or think about listening to issues. She experiences her ideas as completely different sensations of texture and imagined emotions of motion—and these are what she experiences when her thoughts wanders.
Are aphantasics immune to trauma from re-living occasions?
Maybe.
Whereas our proof suggests aphantasics are immune to involuntary visualizations, extra analysis shall be wanted to work out if we’re immune to reliving traumas, or if these will merely set off various kinds of imagined expertise.
What is evident is that Siodmak was unsuitable. In the event you inform individuals they should not consider a pink elephant, a few of us will fortunately put that beast out of our minds, and switch our ideas to different issues. What’s for dinner?
Extra data:
Daniel M. Wegner et al, Paradoxical results of thought suppression., Journal of Character and Social Psychology (2005). DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.53.1.5
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