Don’t Think About the Elephant in the Room

One of my local climbing centres is called the Beacon and there, you’ll find one of their senior staff called Gareth Pritchard. I have a lot of respect for Gareth, he’s a great bloke and very experienced. Yet occasionally, we do find ourselves locked in ardent debate; much like happened recently.

Gareth is great for a rant and after seeing someone struggle with clipping on a lead climb, I was ranting to him about the way ‘backclipping’ is approached by instructors. I didn’t explain it well (I was ranting! which is rarely a place where well thought out arguments are presented) and Gareth disagreed. Which got a bit loud…

Now, old version of me would’ve doubled down and tried to back up my stance but within the last couple of years, I’ve changed approach. If I respect Gareth, why are we disagreeing? And how do I reconcile this?

Which leads us to this article. I do indeed stand by my opinion – backed up by science – but I do need to explain it better. It’s not as simple as ‘just don’t mention the elephant in the room: backclips’ but if I told you “don’t think about elephants”…

The Pink Elephant Paradox

You’ll have heard of this one, it’s ridiculously common:

Don’t think about elephants.
Now what are you thinking about?

This is often known as the Pink Elephant Paradox (the elephant is often pink) but was originally named the Ironic Process Theory by Daniel Wegner in a paper in 1994. The premise is simple: if you try and not think of something, that’s exactly what you’ll be thinking about. Hence the irony.

Reading the original research, it’s a little more complex than that. Wegner’s theory explains

normal and successful mental control occurs through two processes that work together to promote desired mental states: an intentional operating process that searches for the mental contents that will yield the desired state and an ironic monitoring process that searches for mental contents that signal the failure to achieve the desired state

Wegner (1994) Ironic Process of Mental Control, 101, 1, page 35

So basically two systems, one that looks for the right thing to do (called the Operating Process) and another that watches out to make sure we’re not doing the wrong thing (called the Monitoring Process). As long as the first system is working, we’re all good but when it stops working, the second kicks in and puts the thought we’re trying to avoid right in the forefront of the memory.

But why might the first system fail? Well according to Wegner’s original work (1994), “the central variable dividing successful control from ironic effects is the availablity of mental capacity”. What might reduce ‘mental capacity’? Two examples spring to mind: stress and fatigue; both of which are highly relevant to our work as climbing coaches and instructors.

Application to Climbing

The best example I can think of – indeed, the thing that got me ranting in the Beacon in the first place – is known as back clipping. We can debate how dangerous back clipping is, and how likely it is to occur but for the purposes of this article, let’s simply say it is something we wish to avoid. And it is indeed easily avoided! As long as we’re not ironic about it…

The incident that got me ranting was watching a climber lead a climb but struggle at each and every clip. They pulled the rope up, almost clipped perfectly but stopped, paused, turned the rope as if to back clip, paused again, reversed the error and finally clipped the rope in correctly. Yes, he got it right in the end but the whole process was laborious, time consuming and far from efficient.

I suspect that the reason all lies with the ironic process kicking in: with the added cognitive load, the operating process became overwhelmed and the ironic processtook over. I mean, if nothing else, it was fascinating to watch but in terms of helping this climber, whoever put that thought in his head really did him no favours at all.

It’s a classic instructor move, and I’d seen it a few weeks before. With a climber who’d never clipped a lead route in their life, I’d said to clip in the tail on the way past while climbing on top rope and as I turned around, the instructor who was with them started the conversation with back clipping. Immediately, it was putting that thought right in the front of the climber’s mind; effectively training the ironic process.

Other Climbing Examples

There are various other examples too.

• Trad Leading and trying not to get stressed; mindful that getting nervous isn’t going to help but unable to put that thought out of our mind
• Poor beta and avoiding specific holds; knowing that the big hold is a red herring or that we need to get it later but finding ourselves gravitating towards it regardless
• A poor landing on a boulder problem; perhaps a rock we know we need to avoid that find ourselves heading towards inexplicably

These are merely a few, I’m sure there are many more. Indeed, perhaps you can think of some too and add them in the comments at the bottom.

It’s Madness but One Step Beyond: Don’t Watch That, Watch This!

So what do we do with this information? If this whole article is very much ‘don’t think about what not to think about’ – which is in of itself slightly ironic – what do we do instead?

Much of the work on Ironic Process discusses ‘thought suppression’ but honestly, in my practice, I find that if we’re at the point of trying to suppress thoughts, we’ve left it too late anyway. Instead, I lean on the following phrase:

Get it right to not get it wrong

Thinking of our backclipping example, yes, it is something we wish to avoid but the best way to avoid it ISN’T to tell people, place it in the forefront of their mind and ask them to suppress the thought, it is to provide them with an alternative model to follow instead.

Effectively, I follow a simple staged process:

Stage 1: Allow Natural Action and Analyse

Create an environment – perhaps floor based or with a reduction of risk – that allows people to naturally perform the skill you’ve asked them to perform WITHOUT mentioning the thing they’re supposed to avoid

For example: “Tie into this tail and climb this top rope, simply clipping it in on the way past” known as a ghost lead

Stage 2: Identify and Point Out Errors For Real As They Occur

As and when the error occurs naturally, that is the point where we raise awareness of the error, with an explanation of why it is problematic/dangerous.

For example: [Climber backclips one quickdraw in the middle of a ghost lead]. “See that one in the middle? That’s called a backclip and we want to avoid that so the rope doesn’t inadvertantly unclip itself. Here’s how to clip correctly so it doesn’t occur”

Stage 3: Demonstrate Where Necessary But Inside a Giant Sandwich

If the error doesn’t happen naturally but you wish them to be able to recognise later, consider creating a safe demonstration. HOWEVER, in order to prevent ironic processes from occurring, sandwich the demo in between a huge stack of good practice.

For example, “clip it right, clip it right, clip it right, this is called a backclip, clip it right, clip it right, clip it right…“

In short, really hammer the operating process rather than focus on the monitoring process.

Summary

The classic trick of ‘don’t think about elephants’ works with so many things and in climbing coaching, there are plenty of actions we wish our climber’s to avoid. However, if we don’t want to them to think about the action to avoid – activating something called their Ironic Monitoring Process – we should aim to focus on what they should do by focusing on what is known as their Operating Process.

We could really dig deep into theory but suffice it to say, this switch from Operating to Monitoring Process is particularly likely during times of stress (such as at times of high levels of arousal or fatigue). So the climber that is gripped attempting their first lead really doesn’t want to be thinking about back clips, they should be concentrating on safe and effective clipping.

Awareness is indeed important and sometimes deonstration of the action to be avoided may be necessary but we still need to be acutely aware of Ironic Process Theory by placing that demonstration in the middle of a stack of ‘good practice’.

If You Enjoyed That…

References/Further Reading

Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological review, 101(1), 34.

Wang, Hagger and Chatzisarantis. (2020). Ironic Effects of thought suppression: a meta-analysis. Perspect Psychol Sci, 15(3), 778-793

McLeod. (2023) Ironic Process Theory & The White Bear Experiment. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/ironic-process-theory-white-bear-experiment.html

Sweller, J. (1988). Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning. Cognitive Science, 12(2), 257–285

Climbing Tech Tips (2019) Gym Lead Climbing: 4. Avoid Back-Clipping. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oQVqZHAjpI