Reactance
Reactive resistance - resistance in response to resistance as a reaction to undesirable effects.
People often resist attempts to limit their behavior. J. W. Brem suggested that such counteractions can be considered as manifestations of a single motivational state — to restore freedom that has been threatened or lost. Subsequent work in the framework of reactance theory has shown significant empirical support for this theory and extended its scope to a wide range of psychological problems.
General view of the theory
Reactive resistance is a motivational state that occurs when an individual is aware that their freedom to engage in a particular behavior is threatened or violated. When the motivation for reactive resistance arises, the person seeks to restore this threatened or violated freedom.
This theory States that each person has a finite number of specific behavioral freedoms. A behavior is considered free if the individual implements it at the current time and/or expects to be able to implement it in the future. Behavior in its broadest sense, along with real actions and actions, includes Emotions, attitudes, and beliefs. This idea of perceived, specific freedoms should be distinguished from ideas concerning freedom as a General state. The theory of reactivity does not imply the existence of any need for or desire for freedom per se.
Any event that impedes the exercise of human freedom is a threat to that freedom. Sometimes, of course, events will occur that make free behavior impossible at all. In such cases, a person is deprived of liberty. As a rule, threats to freedom lead to the emergence of reactive resistance. Violations of freedom, however, should only provoke reactive resistance at first. As soon as a person realizes that freedom is irrevocably lost, reactive resistance must also disappear.
In General, the more important a given freedom is and the more freedoms are threatened, the greater the reaction will be. The strength of the reactance also depends on the magnitude of the threat. Some threats cause only minor difficulties in realizing freedom, some cause significant difficulties, and some exclude the possibility of realizing freedom.
The most direct behavioral effect of reactive resistance is actions to restore threatened or violated freedom. However, such attempts to restore freedom will be weakened by two opposing forces. First, as the degree of pressure to submit increases, not only the reactive resistance will increase, but also the motive to submit by renouncing freedom. In addition, there will be some situations where the freedom to implement behavior is not irrevocably violated, but where the costs of direct efforts to restore it are high enough to weaken direct opposition.
Both opposing forces weaken or nullify the immediate efforts to restore freedom, but their internal psychological consequences are quite different. Motives for submission counteract the motivating force of reactive resistance in determining the resulting behavioral trend. However, the costs of efforts to restore freedom should primarily act as a deterrent to open action. If a person is able to restore freedom without incurring exorbitant costs, they will do just that.
Attractiveness of the Communicator
Research by J. W. Brehm and Mann found that subjects who felt that their individual judgments about a group task were important, and who were pressured to change these judgments by a highly attractive group, experienced significant reactive resistance and were inclined to move in the opposite direction to the position held by this group.
Hostility
Worchel found that denying subjects the freedom they expected to choose one of the three gifts resulted in significantly more hostility compared to not confirming their expectation of receiving the most attractive gift, or simply rewarding them with the least attractive prize in the absence of any prior expectations. These results suggest a significant role for reactive resistance in generating hostility when important expected freedoms are arbitrarily violated.