https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/perverse-incentives
Wegner proposed that such attempts at thought suppression [trying not to think about racial stereotypes makes people more conscious of them, sometimes to the point of distraction and anxiety] involve two distinct mental processes. First, there's a conscious and effortful system that works to create the desired outcome–for example, by finding something to think about that's not a white bear. Second, there's a part of the mind that remains alert to what's being suppressed–it scans for white-bear thoughts so that they can be shooed away. Sometimes, especially if we are tired or distracted or inebriated, the workings of the second system seep into consciousness. Now you're thinking of, and maybe talking about, just what you were trying to avoid thinking about.
And there might be something respectable about perversity done right. The righteously perverse individual appreciates the value of rationality, morality, and the good life–and then, chafing against them, chooses another path. Evolutionairy biologists sometimes speak of "hopeful monsters": although evolution typically occurs when tiny changes in phenotypes lead to greater reproductive success, hopeful monsters, which are the products of macromutations, make huge leaps through evolutionary space. Such leaps, theorists say, would be almost certain to fail–but, theoretically, could spawn new lineages. The standard procedure for a rational decision-maker is to consider the alternatives and settle on the option that has the highest probability of maximizing whatever it is that one wants to mazimize, all the while trying to avoid pitfalls, such as myopia, weakness of will, whishful thinking, fear, and overconfidence. But what if you sometimes choose to behav erratically, unpredictably? A small dose of perversity might have its benefits. On an organizational level, for instance, it makes sense for a granting institution to spend its money on the proposals that its experts think are best. And yet it could also make esense, simulatenously, to allocate some of the money by lottery–or even to put aside some small fund for the proposals that the experts think are the worst.
