Dan Wegner
IN MEMORIAM
Professor Daniel Wegner died of ALS July 5, 2013, in Winchester, Massachusetts. Social Psychology Network is maintaining this profile for visitors who wish to learn more about Professor Wegner's work. For more information, please see below:
- Daniel M. Wegner, 65; Harvard social psychologist unraveled mysteries of thought and memory (Boston.com)
- Daniel M. Wegner (Legacy.com)
- In Memoriam: Daniel Wegner (The University of Virginia)
- Daniel Wegner (Trinity University)
- The Life of Dan Wegner: A Meeting Place for Joy and Intelligence (Scientific American)
- In Memory Of…Daniel Wegner (Federation of Associations in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
- Daniel M. Wegner famous for ‘thought suppression’ (The Harvard Gazette)
- Remembering Daniel M. Wegner (Association for Psychological Science)
- Daniel Wegner, 65; psychologist studied life’s obsessions (Boston Globe)
Daniel Wegner's work is focused on the role of thought in self-control and in social life. He has published research on thought suppression -- for example, on how people become preoccupied with a white bear when they are merely asked not to think about it -- and on mental control of other kinds as well. He is interested in transactive memory (how people in groups and relationships remember) and has examined how people identify their actions. Currently, he is investigating how people come to experience their actions as consciously willed. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and by the National Institute of Mental Health. He has been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He also occasionally writes about himself in the third person.
Primary Interests:
- Causal Attribution
- Close Relationships
- Communication, Language
- Emotion, Mood, Affect
- Judgment and Decision Making
- Motivation, Goal Setting
- Person Perception
- Self and Identity
- Social Cognition
Research Group or Laboratory:
- Mental Control Laboratory
Note from the Network: The holder of this profile has certified having all necessary rights, licenses, and authorization to post the files listed below. Visitors are welcome to copy or use any files for noncommercial or journalistic purposes provided they credit the profile holder and cite this page as the source.
Video Gallery
The Art and Science of Thought Suppression
Select video to watch
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49:23 The Art and Science of Thought Suppression
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08:28 Wegstock Speech
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00:01:41 The Mind Club
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05:18 How to Treat OCD and Obsessive Thoughts - Thought Suppression
Additional Videos
Books:
- Schacter, D. S., Gilbert, D. T., Nock, M. K., & Wegner, D. M. (2017). Introducing psychology (4th ed.). New York: Worth.
- Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (Eds.). (1985). A theory of action identification. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
- Wegner, D. M. (2002). The illusion of conscious will. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Wegner, D. M. (1994). White bears and other unwanted thoughts: Suppression, obsession, and the psychology of mental control. New York: Guilford Press.
- Wegner, D. M., & Gray, K. (2016). The mind club: Who thinks, what feels, and why it matters. New York: Penguin Books.
- Wegner, D. M., & Pennebaker, J. W. (Eds.) (1993). Handbook of mental control. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
- Wegner, D. M., & Vallacher, R. R. (1977). Implicit psychology: An introduction to social cognition. New York: Oxford University Press. Japanese translation by Sogensha, 1988.
- Wegner, D. M., & Vallacher, R. R. (Eds.). (1980). The self in social psychology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Journal Articles:
- Gray, H., Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Dimensions of mind perception. Science, 315, 619.
- Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2009). Moral typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 505-520.
- Morewedge, C. K., Preston, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2007). Timescale bias in the attribution of mind. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(1), 1-11.
- Preston, J. L., Ritter, R. S., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Action embellishment: An intention bias in the perception of success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 233-244.
- Pronin, E., Jacobs, E., & Wegner, D. M. (2008). Psychological effects of thought acceleration. Emotion, 8(5), 597-612.
- Vallacher, R. R., & Wegner, D. M. (1987). What do people think they're doing? Action identification and human behavior. Psychological Review, 94(1), 3-15.
- Waytz, A., Gray, K., Epley, N., & Wegner, D. M. (2010). Causes and consequences of mind perception. Trends in Cognitive Science, 14, 383-388.
- Wegner, D. M. (2011). Setting free the bears: Escape from thought suppression. American Psychologist, 66(8), 671-680.
- Wegner, D. M. (2009). How to think, say, or do precisely the worst thing for any occasion. Science, 325, 48-51.
- Wegner, D. M. (2004). Precis of The Illusion of Conscious Will. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 649-692.
- Wegner, D. M. (1994). Ironic processes of mental control. Psychological Review, 101(1), 34-52.
- Wegner, D. M. (1979). Hidden Brain Damage Scale. American Psychologist, 34(2), 192-193.
- Wegner, D. M., & Wheatley, T. (1999). Apparent mental causation: Sources of the experience of will. American Psychologist, 54(7), 480-492.