Although Freud was a smart man, it seems that some of his theories have stigmatized the field of psychology. It is always nice to discover ways in which some of his weaker theories have been re-evaluated and addressed in different terms. According to the ironic process theory, a so-called "Freudian slip" may have nothing to do with Freudian rationale.
Ironic process theory attempts to account for ways in which the mind tries to control itself and explain breakdowns in mental control (Wegner, 1994). According to ironic process theory, a slip of the tongue results in a failed effort to avoid saying something due to limited mental resources. In other words, when the brain is busy and actively trying not to say something, it mistakenly says exactly what it hoped to avoid.
One night, a group of friends were playing a drinking game called 'Tourettes.' The premise of the game goes as follows: a dealer holds a deck of cards and all the players sit in a circle. The dealer 'challenges' each player in clockwise order by producing a card and the two players race to say the first word that comes to mind associated with the first letter of the card value (i.e., if a queen is drawn, an answer could be 'quick'; if a three is drawn, the answer could be 'tree'). The first player to blurt out an appropriate and original answer is awarded the point. The dealer tries to beat every player in the circle, without losing more than three consecutive challenges. Obviously, the addition of alcohol to the game makes it more challenging and, in my opinion, more entertaining. It was a new game for most of the girls playing and the group was large. Everyone had spent a long day together and each girl was flirting with drunken delirium. One African-American girl was the dealer and was a having a decent winning streak. Excitement was rising as each opponent sought to end her reign as dealer. Then, it happened. A nine was drawn from the deck and both girls produced words beginning with the letter 'n' that had already been said. In a scramble to produce another word, the challenger, Sarah*, blurted out a derogatory term and horror immediately swept across her face.
Was this a case of racism or hateful speech brought about by the effects of alcohol, as many girls assumed, or was there a different explanation that was not considered? Reading about ironic process theory causes me to lean to the latter explanation. Sarah*, from what I know of her, is a very open-minded and accepting person. She has been the target of negative speech directed at an aspect of her life that is very important to her and can empathize with those targeted for their differences. To those who knew her well, her word-choice was very uncharacteristic of her. It seems that, in light of the ironic process theory, Sarah* was simply the victim of an attempt to not say something so negatively charged. Sarah* was mentally busy because she was playing a game with unfamiliar rules and trying to balance alcohol consumption (which impairs functioning) as well. Her brain, in recognizing the inpropriety of a racial slur that satisfied the rules of the game but could also be negatively descriptive of her opponent, set her up to fail. By focusing on what she knew she should not say, but feeling the pressures of a race to answer, she seemingly could think of nothing to say but what was occupying her thoughts.
Unfortunately, no one involved knew of ironic process theory and the issue became a very dramatic sequence of events that hurt multiple people due to amplification and misinterpretation. It seems to me that if everyone had simply looked for another explanation of what happened, Sarah* might have been the recipient of empathy instead of ridicule.
*Name changed to protect her identity.
Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101, 34-52.
With the presidential campaign in full-swing, partisan platforms dominate the media. It never ceases to amaze me how passionately some people, including some of my closest friends, cling to their identity as a member of one political party. Although an obvious approach to discovering someone's political affiliation would be to simply ask them how they identify, this approach seems extremely lacking in accuracy. Often, it seems, people identify with labels of which they know relatively little about. However, I have found hope for deciphering more accurate representations of political beliefs in the concept of the impact of motivational biases on behavioral attributions.
When people encounter events and behaviors in their social world that they do not understand, specifically events that are perceived as unusual or negative, they try to make sense of them by explaining their causes. These causal explanations of behavior and events are known as attributions (Heider, 1958). Sometimes our attributions are biased by different factors. A motivational bias occurs when our attributions are influenced by our individual preferences, desires, and necessities in order to protect things like self-esteem (Dunning, 2005) or ideologies (Skitka et al., 2002). When ideologically motivated, our attributions are adjusted to fit our political beliefs. Skitka et al. (2002) made a list of different events and asked political conservatives and liberals to make attributions for the events. In Western cultures, people tend to make personal attributions by explaining behaviors and events in terms of internal characteristics, such as effort or personality (Heider, 1958). Situational attributions, explanations that focus on external factors like other people or luck (Heider, 1958), are much less likely to be made in Western cultures (Markus et al., 2006). Interestingly, when motivated by ideology, people exchange their personal attributions for situational attributions (Skitka et al., 2002).
Upon learning this, I was immediately struck by all the instances in which people around me have made personal and situational attributions of political events. I interrupted each of my roommates and friends who were at my house that night individually and asked them to explain three commonly discussed events: job-loss, homelessness, and death penalty execution. In every explanation they made, my friends made attributions that reflected their political beliefs, sometimes making personal attributions (the homeless person was lazy) or situational attributions (the executed person was unfortunate enough to live in Texas). I was surprised to see how accurately these explanations reflected their ideologies.
Later that night, a friend showed me this video clip from a recent episode of Saturday Night Live: This parody of two leading political figures, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton, offers both humorous but telling explanations of, among other things, Palin and Clinton's respective campaigns to reach the White House. As evident in Clinton's rant, she explains her desire to become President not as a desire to hold a historically gendered role (situational), but as a personal desire (personal). Clinton attributes her path to the White House as a result of her personality traits and hard work and implies that Palin's path is merely a case of situational good fortune. While Clinton personally attributes her former proximity to the Presidency and situationally attributes her failure to reach that goal, Palin situationally attributes her presidential aspirations ("Just one heartbeat away from being President of the United States"). Palin attributes a rise to the presidency as an issue of desire and Clinton mocks her personal attribution in order to protect her ideologies and self-esteem (thus implying a situational attribution, i.e., the Democratic National Convention's endorsement of a different candidate as the reason she can no longer be President).
It's amazing what you can learn by simply listening to people offer explanations.
Dunning, D. (2005). Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself. New York: Psychology Press.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.
Markus, H. R., Uchida, Y., Omoregie, H., Townsend, S. M., & Kitayama, S. (2006). Going for the gold: Models of agency in Japanese and American contexts. Psychological Science, 17, 103-112.
Skitka, L. J., Mullen, E., Griffin, T., Hutchinson, S., & Chamberlin, B. (2002). Dispositions, scripts, or motivated correction? Understanding ideological differences in explanations for social problems. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 83, 470-487.
