Imagine it’s 1963 and you’re a kid sitting in a playroom with a totally kick-ass battle robot toy in front of you. Now imagine that a bunch of dudes in white coats leave you alone with the robot … but before they do so, they forbid you to play with it. In fact, they say you’ll be severely punished if you so much as touch it again. (They tell other kids in other rooms that they’ll only be moderately punished if they play with the robot.)
iDread
Bolshephobia: fear of Bolsheviks.
Amazingly, both you and the “moderately punished” kids are able to keep your hands off the ’bot. Then the white coats say just kidding: You can all play with the robot again!
Of the kids threatened with severe or moderate punishment, only one group returns to playing with the robot. Which do you think it is? You’d think the kids who were threatened with severe punishment would still be scared to play with the ’bot, right? Right?
Actually, it’s the other way around. When threat of punishment is removed, kids in the “severe” group go right back to the ’bot, while kids in the “moderate” punishment group tend to favor other toys.
This is because the threat of severe punishment was enough reason for kids to stop playing with the robot, while the threat of moderate punishment wasn’t enough in itself to keep kids away. These “moderate” kids had to augment the threat of punishment with their own reasons to stay away. They devalued the robot or otherwise rationalized their decision not to play with it—reasons that lingered even after the threat of punishment was removed.