Reactance (psychology)
In psychology, reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, regulations, criticisms, advice, recommendations, information, nudges, and messages that are perceived to threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms.
Reactance occurs when an individual feels that an agent is attempting to limit one's choice of response and/or range of alternatives.
Reactance can encourage an individual to adopt or strengthen a view or attitude which is indeed contrary to that which was intended — which is to say, to a response of noncompliance — and can also increase resistance to persuasion.
Some individuals might employ reverse psychology in a bid to exploit reactance for their benefit, in an attempt to influence someone to choose the opposite of what is being requested.
[1] Psychological reactance is "an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors.
Because this motivational state is a result of the perceived reduction of one's freedom of action, it is considered a counterforce, and thus is called "psychological reactance".
According to William R. Miller,[5] "Research demonstrates that a counselor can drive resistance (denial) levels up and down dramatically according to his or her personal counseling style".
For a behavior to be free, the individual must have the relevant physical and psychological abilities to partake in it, and must know they can engage in it at the moment, or in the near future.
Likewise, legitimacy may point to a set of behaviors threatened since there will be a general assumption that an illegitimate interference with a person's freedom is less likely to occur.
This is an indicator that adolescents will experience reactance to authoritative control, especially the proscriptions and prescriptions of adult behaviors that they view as hedonically relevant.
For instance, an experiment that exposed participants to immigration messages that was threatening (for example via group stereotypes and uncivil language) resulted in very large reactance, in the form of anger and counterarguing.
[13] Dillard & Shen have provided evidence that psychological reactance can be measured,[7] in contrast to the contrary opinion of Jack Brehm, who developed the theory.
In their work they measured the impact of psychological reactance with two parallel studies: one advocating flossing and the other urging students to limit their alcohol intake.
Miller and colleagues conducted their 2007 study Psychological reactance and promotional health messages: the effects of controlling language, lexical concreteness, and the restoration of freedom at the University of Oklahoma, with the primary goal being to measure the effects of controlling language in promotional health messages.
Their research revisited the notion of restoring freedom by examining the use of a short postscripted message tagged on the end of a promotional health appeal.
They concluded that the use of more concrete, low-controlling language, and the restoration of freedom through the inclusion of a choice-emphasizing postscript, may offer the best solution to reducing ambiguity and reactance created by overtly persuasive health appeals.
