It is critical that you “don’t think of an elephant.“

What do you think of?

Upon getting these instructions, most people end up thinking of an elephant.

This is a well-documented phenomena that highlights the structure of our thoughts. In order to think of something other than an elephant, we have to first draw a circle around the elephant. While it seems harmless in this example, negative instructions have real problematic consequences.

Consequences

There are several consequences that arise from our thoughtless use of a negation.

Negation Instructions leads to Bad Practice

The book “With Winning in Mind” by Olympian Lanny Bassham focuses on the mental side of sports performance. Specifically, he talks about the concept of Mental Rehearsal: because the subconscious mind cannot distinguish between real experiences and vividly imagined ones, our mental visualizations can greatly affect our actual performance. However, it goes both ways:

1. If we imagine ourselves going through the process to succeed, we reinforce those mental pathways;
2. if we imagine ourselves messing up and losing, we reinforce those pathways.

According to Bassham, if a student imagines themselves losing focus or slipping, it increases the “mental muscle memory” for that action and increases the likelihood for the slip-up.

When we provide instructions in negation form: “Don’t slip up, and don’t breathe”, the student has to first imagine “slipping up” and then “breathing” before they get to alternatives. It effectively forces them to rehearse their bad habits first.

Alternative:

Instead, we should provide instructions on what they SHOULD do instead. Speak in the affirmative.

• Instead of “don’t slip up” we can say “lower your weight.”
• Instead of “Don’t breath” we can say “Hold your breath.”

Poor Directions for Problem-Solving

Negation statements become an obstacle during problem-solving.

In 1972, cognitive scientists Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon performed several studies on human problem-solving. Among their findings, they found that people predominantly solved problems using heuristics–predominantly “means-end analysis.”

This basically meant that people tried to solve problems by recognizing where they started, what they wanted, and how they could get there; also known as the Initial State, the Goal, and strategies.

For example,

• Initial State: “I’m hungry”
• Goal State: “I’m full.”
• Strategies: “Eat a sandwich”

This is an extremely common and simple process. The biggest hurdle in using means-end analysis is uncertainty: specifically, if you lack a clearly defined goal state.

For example, let’s imagine we have a problem, and we define the goal in terms of a negation.

We might say, “I don’t like what our elected official has decided.”

• Initial State: “I’m angry at our elected official’s decision”
• Goal State: (Unclear)
  • “Not to be angry at our elected official’s decision?”
  • “Change our elected official’s decision?”
  • “Change our elected official?”
• Strategies: “?”

As you can see, when we use the negation “don’t” in our statement, it makes the goal state less clear. Without a clear goal state, we struggle to come up with strategies to resolving the problem. This often stalls the problem-solving process.

Alternative:

While real-world problems often come in the negation form, “I don’t like X” we can use those dislikes to identify what we DO want. We call the desired state of the world an “outcome” state.

• Instead of “I don’t want the official to squander our tax dollars” we can identify the outcome state, “I’d like for the official to spend the tax dollars on things that align with my values.”
• Instead of “I don’t want to be frustrated anymore” we can identify the outcome state of “I want to be content.”

Negation statements lead to too many pathways. It becomes very difficult to identify the best strategies.

Proximity to Violence

There is, however, another issue with Negations and Problem-Solving: negation problem statements are psychologically close to violent solutions.

Marshall Rosenberg, founder of the Non-Violent Communication movement (which he actually wanted to call “Compassionate Communication”), was fond of saying “negative statements make violence appealing.”

For example, beach goers occasionally report being bitten by sharks. Let’s say we describe the problem in the following ways:

1. Negation: “I don’t want people to get bitten by sharks.”
2. Outcome: “I want people to stay safe from shark attacks.”

Rosenberg would argue that the negation form of the problem makes a violent strategy obvious. If you don’t want people to get bitten by the sharks, it’s easy: Get rid of the people, or get rid of the sharks. Basically, this framing establishes both the people and the sharks as obstacles to be removed.

Whereas the outcome form of the problem doesn’t directly imply the sharks and people to be obstacles. This isn’t to say you wouldn’t think of “removing the sharks” as a solution, but it becomes more evenly considered among other solutions.

People are generally fairly lazy problem-solvers. We tend to only consider a few possibilities before deciding. So if one of those considered solutions is a violent one, it becomes more enticing.

Alternative:

Like with problem-solving, a better alternative comes from identifying the desired “outcome” state rather than a negation statement.