Jonah Berger, professor of marketing at the University of Pennsylvania and author of The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind, says: “Reactance in psychology is a negative emotional state that we feel when we can not control our behavior.
Humans have a motivation for freedom and independence, and when we feel that someone is trying to persuade us or change our behavior, actions, or attitudes, we adopt a counter-reaction to persuasion, which you can almost liken to activating an anti-missile defense system.”
Reactance can sometimes be helpful. For example, thanks to not spending all our money on advertising and not usually being deceived, but reactance can sometimes be harmful. For example, the CEO may need to make necessary changes in the company, but employees do not like to dictate the implementation of new tasks and resist them.
Also, public health officials want us to wear masks, but some people consider it a violation of their rights, so they refuse.
4 ways to change people's behavior without provoking reactance
1. Display options instead of giving commands
“The reason for reactance in the core is that people feel they are not in control of their decisions, so it means any way you use to take back control and allow them to convince themselves that they will be more willing to agree,” Berger says.
For example, when a leader imposes instructions, people will think about all the matters they do not like about them, but if they choose between two things, their minds will work differently. Instead of the downsides of any options, they will evaluate them to determine the best. Since they think about which options they prefer, they are more likely to decide.
2. Allow people to make choices by themselves
If you want people to do more and work longer, you can not ask them directly because they may resent you, and do not choose between working more or working less because they probably will not choose the option you want. The solution proposed by Berger is to show them the problem and leave them to come up with solutions themselves.
Berger recently spoke with the founder of a startup who effectively implemented this solution. The founder needed his team to work longer, but he did not want to ask them to do so.
Instead, he held a meeting and said, “What kind of company do we want: to be a good company or a great company? ” And everyone said, "Great company," and he asked, "How can we be so?" The staff suggested solutions, one of which was to work more, and later in the meeting, the founder came back to that idea and said, “That is a great suggestion.
Let us do it,” Berger says. “It would be much harder for people not to agree with the proposal if they came up with the idea themselves.”
3. Highlight the gap
If you want to change someone's behavior, instead of telling them what they are doing wrong, Says Berger, “Point out the gap between their attitudes and actions, or the difference between what they are doing and what someone else may recommend.”
This technique was a resounding success a few years ago in Thailand, where the government launched an anti-smoking campaign, but it did not produce any results, and the government did not know how to change the situation, so it appointed the advertising company "Ogilvy" which implemented a brilliant idea.
The company sent children to the streets with cigarettes to approach smokers and ask them to light them. When that happened, smokers began to try to educate children about the harms of smoking to discourage them from it, and as soon as the adult smoker finished talking, the child gave them a card that read: "You are worried about me, but why aren't you worried about yourself?"
Hidden cameras filmed the interviews. Then, the company turned them into a commercial that quickly led to a 40% increase in calls to an agency that helps people quit smoking.
4. Use of social pressure
People may be stubborn, but they do not like to be different from their peers. Berger says: “Just pointing to the situation and saying, 'This is how everyone does' is often enough to circumvent reactance.”
For example, tax collectors in the UK started texting people who do not pay their taxes, and instead of asking them to pay, the messages indicated that most of their neighbors pay their taxes and, as a result, tax reimbursement rates went up. “You are only giving them information that will make them reconsider their actions,” says Berger.
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