Psychological reactance: why people don’t do what you want them to

And three phrases you can use so others don’t resist your message

If your attempts to persuade someone to do something are failing, you need to know about psychological reactance. 

This happens when you tell someone you want them to wash the dishes or send that email, and they do the exact opposite. It can be infuriating, especially if your request seems perfectly reasonable to you, but this happens when people feel like their freedom is being taken from them, which is hugely uncomfortable (not to mention unhealthy) and if we put people in that position, they're likely to resist our suggestion, even if it means acting against their best interests.

This often happens unconsciously, meaning we don't necessarily know when we're doing it. So if you want someone to hear you when you're making a request, you need to respect their need for autonomy – the need to make their own decisions.

Here are three ways to do that:

Invite people to share their perspective

Ask what THEY think … and listen to the answer, instead of just telling them what you think and what you want.

Present options, instead of making demands

For example, instead of "Please do X", you can say "I'm wondering if we can do X in order to achieve Y" or “If you want to achieve Y, one possible way would be to do X. What do you think?” Again: it’s best to approach this with curiosity and if you want to be heard, be prepared to also hear the other side.

Acknowledge your subjectivity

Tell the other person you’re aware that yours is just one perspective of many. You can do this by prefacing conversations with something along the lines of “These are just my thoughts; feel free to ignore them if they’re not useful to you”.

Magic happens when two or more people collaborate from their respective places of power. So no matter how tempting it can be to push for what you know to be the way forward, it's important to allow all sides into the decision-making process from the get-go, and if you do, you might just find that other people have some good ideas, too. 

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Thank you for reading!

We’re Hazel (ex boxer, therapist and author) and Ellie (ex psychology science writer). We left our jobs to build an interactive narrative app for self-awareness and emotion regulation (Betwixt), which you can try on Android here and on iOS here.

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