Dieting 135is trying to suppress more salient (Wenzlaff and Wegner, 2000). This has
been called the “theory of ironic processes of mental control” (Wegner, 1994)
and describes a rebound effect that is shown for both thoughts and behav-
iors. For example, in an early study participants were asked to try not to
think of a white bear but to ring a bell if they did (Wegner et al., 1987).
The results showed that those who were trying not to think about the bear
thought about the bear more frequently than those who were told to think
about it. Similar results have been found for thinking about sex ( Wegner
et al., 1999), thinking about mood ( Wegner, Erber, and Zanakos, 1993) and
thinking about a stigma (Smart and Wegner, 1999). A decision not to eat
specific foods or to eat less is central to the dieter’s cognitive set. This results
in a similar state of denial and attempted thought suppression, and dieters
have been shown to see food in terms of “forbiddenness” (e.g., King, Herman,
and Polivy, 1987) and to show a preoccupation with the food that they are
trying to deny themselves (Grilo, Shiffman, and Wing, 1989; Ogden, 1995;
Fletcher et al., 2007). Furthermore, dieters have been shown to hold more
negative views about high-calorie food when measured explicitly and
more positive views about it when measured implicitly, reflecting their
conflicts around what they want to eat and what they feel they should want
to eat (Hoefling and Strack, 2008). Some research has explored rebound
effects following thought suppression for both subsequent thoughts and
actual eating behavior. For example, Soetens et al. (2006) directly related
the theory of thought suppression to eating behavior and used an experi-
mental design to explore the impact of trying to suppress eating-related
thoughts on subsequent thoughts about eating. The results showed that
disinhibited restrained eaters (i.e., those who try to eat less but often overeat)
used more thought suppression than the other groups. Further, this group
also showed a rebound effect following a thought suppression task about
food. This means that restrained eaters who tend to overeat try to suppress
thoughts about food more often, but if they do, they think about food more
often afterwards. Soetens and Braet (2006) reported a similar rebound effect
for obese high-restrained eaters and food-related thoughts, and Erskine (2008)
reported a rebound effect for the consumption of chocolate with both men
and women consuming more chocolate in a taste test if they had previ-
ously been asked to suppress thoughts about eating chocolate.
If suppressing thoughts makes you think about things more, then the
reverse should also be the case. In line with this approach, some research
has explored the effectiveness of a cue exposure procedure whereby dieters
have been exposed to foods that are forbidden as a means to counteract