Reactance theory and Rebellious teens

If you have a teen sitting in your home, you would’ve noticed they break rules. They want to disagree every time, and the word freedom or independence shows up in every argument. While most parents discard this as a mere characteristic of teenagers, psychology says it’s human nature. We are naturally wired to resist when being told to do something; we want autonomy and freedom. 

It’s called Reactance Theory, and it was found by Jack Brehm in 1966, and the experiment is quite a simple one; in fact, if you have a small child at home, you could replicate the experiment. Commonly known as the Forbidden Toy Study, Brehm placed usual toys children play with, but split it into two categories: toys that were freely available and toys that were restricted by a transparent barrier. While in a normal circumstance, each toy would’ve had almost equal importance, but when restricted, the children abandoned all the freely available toys and tried to get the restricted ones. Once the barrier was removed, they rushed to the restriced toys.

There’s some common examples of this. Reactance is why banned books become so popular and it is why marketing tactics like ‘limited time only’ or ‘only 5 left in stock’ works.

 Psychology is everywhere around us; to the naked eye, it’s magic. To the trained eye, it’s a well prepared show that always has logical explanations.