What Does it Take to Negate?

Just say no! is easy advice we sometimes give or receive when it comes to controlling unwanted behavior or thoughts. Negations of this kind are also frequently employed in attempts to exert social influence. Slogans such as Don't drink and drive!, or Don't mess with Texas! were used as campaigns to change people's behavior or to shape public opinion. However, there is ample reason to assume that it takes much more to successfully process negations as their frequent use might suggest. The central hypothesis of the present research claims that denial must be cognitively constructed after the perception of negations. This process is assumed to take place in a slow, reflective system of information processing. Because many situations are not suited to reflective process-ing, pre-constructive effects of negated information will often influence cognition and behavior. The present research indicates that pre-constructive influences of negations push our thinking and doing in precisely the opposite direction the original information was aiming at.