[taneq]

Thanks! I'd heard this phenomenon referred to as "the imp of the perverse" but I didn't know the source.

I've always thought it was some mental phenomenon where any sufficiently strong result ('don't jump') automatically comes with a weak inverse result ('jump!'). Never figured out whether it was some kind of mental self-check mechanism to catch strongly held false beliefs, or whether it's just a quirk of the way nerves work (sort of like a mental after-image), but I definitely get it. (And it's not just about jumping personally, if I'm standing holding a laptop near a long drop I'll feel a shadow of an urge to hurl it off... it's really weird.)