You Should Read This… But it’s Up to You
Freedom has been a hot topic in 2020.
Most of the world has seen restrictions over many of the little things we took for granted.
While many (myself included) would argue that such impositions were an integral part of the best-known approach to a greater threat at the time, of course we’ve all been affected by them. Some others have pushed back against lockdowns, in their own way. Some may be asking: What, exactly, should freedom look like?
Alas, as much as this article seems to be heading towards big, deep topics, it will not get heavy. There’ll be no thoughts on governance or inherent human freedoms or cultural shifts or the best way to combat a virus. So, don’t worry about that.
Instead, I want to move us to a comparatively minuscule space; a theory in psychology that has probably been having a grand ole time playing in our brains this year.
Because as restrictions rise and fall, our brains respond. And how people react to perceived threats to their autonomy can be pretty interesting…
Reactance
People like to feel free. That’s human.
We see it in toddlers, who want their toy when it’s taken away from them but chuck it to the side when it’s in their hands.
I see it in my cat, Gary, who will happily come and plonk himself onto your lap if he’s in the mood, but if you place him there yourself, he’ll usually whine and skulk away.
(Gary is not a human, but you see where I’m going.)
Adults, too, don’t particularly like being told what to do.
It’s not that we’re all irrational and rebellious. Mostly, we value a sense of freedom, choice and control. And, when we feel like a freedom or choice is being taken from us, we’re motivated to reassert it.
In psychology, this theory began with Jack Brehm in the 1960’s and is known as reactance.
Brehm states that “there may be two manifestations of the occurrence of reactance: actual attempts to restore freedom, and increased perceived attractiveness of the lost or threatened option.”
In one of Brehm and Sensenig’s experiments[1], participants were given a note from another fake participant about the task they were both completing. The participant was told that the note might help them make choices in the task, but they didn’t need to go along with the note if they thought another option would be better.
Some notes had softer suggestions (like ‘I’d prefer…’) and others had more forceful requests (like ‘we should…’). The latter was a potential stimulus of reactance, where participants might feel like their freedom to choose was being usurped.
Indeed, participants who received the ‘we should’ notes were less likely to choose in compliance with the note than the other group.
A personal example
When I was with my friend at the theatre once, a couple sitting next to us leaned over before the production began. ‘We need to swap seats with you,’ they said.
‘Sorry? What?’ we asked, a bit baffled.
‘Oh, see, he hasn’t got a great back so your seats will be better.’
My friend and I looked at each other.
‘Sorry, no. We really like our seats,’ we responded. Our seats weren’t notably different from the couple’s, but we had chosen them, and we wanted to keep them.
Were we being assholes? Maybe. I don’t think so. But I think the way it was presented to us — that we had to swap seats, the very seats we had tickets for and had chosen ourselves — prompted reactance and made us want to hold on to them more than if the couple had perhaps been less demanding about it.
Some other examples
· A teen is told they are not allowed to go to a party. Now, they desperately want to go to the party. They try to convince their parents to let them, and if there’s still no luck, they sneak out and attend anyway.
· A person at a sports game is told by someone sitting in front of them that they’re being too loud.
Because the spectator sees yelling as an inherent right at a sports game, and the other person is trying to eliminate that freedom, they yell more. And louder.
· Someone is choosing between two dresses in a store. The store manager explains to them that, actually, they can’t have the first dress: It was left out by accident but is on hold for someone else. The person choosing between the two dresses now sees that dress as the better choice and tries to persuade the manager that they’re entitled to it because they left it on the sales floor.
And, if we’re told we cannot socialise with friends or go to a café, reactance may prompt us to want to do those things even more than when we could freely do them.
Of course, many variables go into the extent and response that comes with the state of reactance. If you don’t care very much about the particular freedom being taken away, you probably won’t experience as much reactance. At the same time, the fact that it has been taken away can make it seem more attractive in general.
Sometimes a freedom being threatened comes with implied future restrictions that enhance the level of reactance. For example, for the teen who is told they can’t attend the party, there’s a potential implication there that future party attendance might be at risk, too.
There are also other factors likely affecting many of my examples above; priming, scarcity, social proof and others. But they’re other psychological phenomena for another day.
The key point is that reactance can involve frustration, anger, desire for the lost freedom, and an attempt to reclaim the loss. When humans are pushed in one direction, it can prompt them to go in another. Sometimes the actions taken to restore the perceived lost choice is not even to the actor’s benefit, but purely to conserve their freedom.
Reactance and Influence: But You’re Free
It’s common in sales training to discuss urgency creation; demonstrating to the customer why moving forward now comes with more benefits (or avoids more losses) than moving forward later.
And while urgency is important, when not built effectively one can end up creating pressure instead. While urgency is felt by a customer internally, being pressured is an external push.
Pressure can start to look a lot like taking someone’s choice away. Which, as we’ve discussed, is a pretty nice way to prompt reactance in the person you’re trying to influence.
If you’re inferring that your customer has no choice but to buy your product, your customer may feel an instinctive desire to demonstrate that they, in fact, can choose not to buy it.
In one study, when people were asked to give to charity, their likelihood of compliance skyrocketed when the requester added on, ‘but you’re free to accept or refuse’. In another, participants were more likely to complete a survey or lend their phone to a stranger when the ‘but you are free’ technique was used.
If you’re attempting to influence someone else, it’s good to be aware of your language. A common strategy to minimise reactance in a sales setting is to reaffirm the person’s freedom and control. Phrases like ‘it’s up to you’, ‘it’s your choice’, ‘whatever you like’, and ‘you’re free to choose’ can buffer strong requests to increase compliance.
Reinforcing someone’s right to make their own decisions can be useful in various contexts, both formal and informal. So, you should give it a go next time. Or don’t. Because, you know, it’s up to you.
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