Student Opinion Column: “Reactance” is Unavoidable for Teens
Launch the media gallery 1 playerIt was around 7:00 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and like every other teenage girl, I needed to clean my room. I finally got myself motivated after days of pushing it away; but right when I was 30 minutes in, I heard that gut-wrenching saying that every teenager hates: “Nevaeh! Make sure you clean your room!” Mom said.
“Mom just told me to clean my room.” I thought. That’s when every ounce of cleaning motivation I had was immediately sapped from my body. “Nope, I absolutely can’t clean my room now,” I decided.
Every teenager has experienced a scenario similar to this, at least, once in their life. I recently learned there’s even a name for it—Reactance.
Psychological reactance is an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors. This can be caused multiple ways. If there is a red button that says, “DO NOT TOUCH,” you instantly want to touch it. If a child gets told to not eat a lot of candy, they suddenly have a burning desire to cram candy into their mouth.
Or, in my example, when I am cleaning my room then Mom sends me a text to clean my room, I immediately lose all incentive to clean. Even though deep down I still want to clean my room, I won’t because I got told to do it while I already thought to do it myself. Now, this is not my mom’s fault; she is only reminding me to clean because she knows it needs to be done. But the minute she says it, it’s now a chore instead of something I chose to do myself.
There are advantages and disadvantages of reactance. An advantage would be that it can protect our autonomy and freedom. A disadvantage of reactance, for example, is that people can use reverse psychology on you. The phrase behind reactance is, “you can’t tell me what to do or think.” An example of both reverse psychology and reactance together looks like this: my friend wants me to go to the basketball game instead of doing my homework, but she knows I will want to do my homework instead, so she says, “Don’t come to the basketball game.” Now, because she said this, I will go to the basketball game. Even though she wanted me to go the whole time, I did not know that.
No matter the advantages and disadvantages, I truly believe reactance is inevitable. This will happen to you plenty of times in everyone’s life. You can’t avoid reactance; it just happens. All you can do is be aware of it so you can manage it. How can I manage it? I guess I’ll try telling my mom to tell me NOT to clean my room. Hopefully then, I will hop right to cleaning it and everyone will be happy!