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Daniel Wegner

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description Daniel Wegner Overview

Daniel M. Wegner was an American social psychologist known for research on thought suppression, mental control, and the experience of conscious will. His ironic process theory explains why deliberate attempts to suppress a thought can make that thought more mentally accessible, an effect often illustrated by instructions not to think about a white bear. He also studied transactive memory in groups and argued that conscious intention does not always reveal the actual causes of human action.

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What is Daniel Wegner's Ironic Process Theory?

Ironic Process Theory explains how deliberate attempts to suppress certain thoughts actually make those thoughts more likely to surface. Wegner famously demonstrated this with his white bear experiment, where participants could not stop thinking about a white bear when told to ignore it.

What did Daniel Wegner say about free will?

In his book The Illusion of Conscious Will, Wegner argued that the feeling of conscious free will is essentially an illusion. He posited that the brain creates a sense of agency after the fact to explain the unconscious mechanisms that actually drive human action.

What is Wegner's concept of transactive memory?

Transactive memory is a psychological hypothesis proposing that people in close relationships form a shared, interconnected memory system. For example, one partner might remember all the passwords while the other remembers all the social plans, relying on each other as external memory drives.

Where did Daniel Wegner teach psychology?

For many years, Daniel Wegner was a prominent professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. In 2013, he joined the faculty at Harvard University, but tragically passed away just a few months later in July of that year.

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