Our Desire to Return to Normal: The Psychology of Reactance
Normal is over. Admitting to it is another thing. Clearly the hordes of tourists in southern Europe have not admitted to it. Clearly the thousands moving to Florida every day have not admitted that Normal is over either – even when the water off Miami has been measured to be 101 F. Clearly this behaviour is very odd. How can we explain and understand this seemingly irrational behaviour? Well, since 1966 there has been a useful theory that is at least part of the answer: Reactance.
Almost 60 years have passed since Brehm presented a theory of psychological reactance as an answer to these questions. Reactance – the motivation to regain a freedom after it has been lost or threatened – leads people to resist the social influence of others. Since Brehm’s first publication on reactance in 1966, the phenomenon has attracted attention in basic as well as applied research in areas such as health, marketing, politics, and education, and a wealth of reactance studies have been published. In general, people are convinced that they possess certain freedoms to engage in so-called free behaviors. Yet there are times when they cannot, or at least feel that they cannot, do so. Being persuaded to buy a specific product in the grocery store, being forced to pay tuition fees, being prohibited from using a mobile phone in school, and being instructed to perform work for the boss are all examples of threats to the freedom to act as desired, and this is where reactance comes into play. Reactance is an unpleasant motivational arousal that emerges when people experience a threat to or loss of their free behaviors. It serves as a motivator to restore one’s freedom. The amount of reactance depends on the importance of the threatened freedom and the perceived magnitude of the threat. Internal threats are self-imposed threats arising from choosing specific alternatives and rejecting others. External threats arise either from impersonal situational factors that by happenstance create a barrier to an individual’s freedom or from social influence attempts targeting a specific individual (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Clee & Wicklund, 1980). The unpleasant motivational state of reactance results in behavioral and cognitive efforts to reestablish one’s freedom, accompanied by the experience of emotion. People who are threatened usually feel uncomfortable, hostile, aggressive, and angry (Berkowitz, 1973; Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981; Dillard & Shen, 2005; Rains, 2013). On the behavioral side, threatened people may exhibit the restricted behavior (direct restoration) or may observe others performing a related behavior (indirect restoration). They may aggressively force the threatening person to remove the threat or they may behave in a hostile and aggressive way just to let off steam (aggression). On the cognitive side, people may derogate the source of threat, upgrade the restricted freedom, or downgrade the imposed option. [1]
Well know that you’ve got a basic understanding of this theory, does this help you understand the denial that is going on? I hope so, but I hope that you would not think this is a slam dunk and that there is more to the story. Well, of course there is more to it, so much so that I cannot possibly explore the complexities of this issue. However, I will take a stab at one other aspect of this issue written by a Greek who is looking with amazement and sorrow at the current fires consuming the forests of his home country. Here is what he wrote recently:
Try to understand why a people whose country burns do not embrace green politics. One reason, which we encounter all over the world, is that the weak know that the powerful have the political capacity to make them fund the green transition. After paying for the bankers’ crimes, after suffering a decade of harsh austerity, they will now have to pay the huge cost of restoring the planet, whose degradation generated wealth beyond the reach of any treasury. However, in the case of my people, there is that other reason too: a well-repressed sense of common guilt. Our working class and our petit bourgeoisie know that, in the early Seventies, they too played their part in a steady assault on nature. While each did little individual damage, compared to the vast devastation wrought by the oligarchs, their guilt makes it easy for the ruling class to say to them: “We were in this together.” And in doing so, to silence. [2]
In other words, the ultra rich enriching themselves as they destroy the world have used our guilt to enable them to do nothing. We are filled with self-loathing and our guilt and have frozen us like deer in the head lights because we know that individually we are powerless and only the elite can change anything. Yes, we have indirect power – to put pressure on them to change, but our own guilt is preventing us from doing so? What to do? Forgive ourselves. Admit to our minor guilt, but be very, very angry with those who are manipulating us for their own advantage. All we can do is forgive ourselves, and stop seeing changing the way we live as a loss of freedom but rather see change as a way to gain another kind of freedom – the freedom to live WITH Nature instead of exploiting the natural world and treating it like a “thing”. The world we live in is not a thing, unless you consider yourself a thing – which is exactly what our current industrial/money system considers you. Well, if you buy into that, good luck to you. I consider that a death wish, and considering recent Climate news like the hot 101 F ocean off Miami and fires in Greece Mother Nature seems to agree that our current way of treating her and each other is just that – a death wish. Yet, there is good news. We made the mess, so we can clean up the mess. But first we must overcome our Reactance and forgive ourselves. Then change, really change. Not just as individuals, but as a Society. What will that change be exactly? Nobody knows. But I would say if we make the first step, it will lead to the next step, and so on. Biologists call that Emergence. It is how life evolves. Perhaps if we take that first step we too can evolve – and then thrive.
References
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4675534/
- https://unherd.com/2023/07/greece-was-destined-to-burn/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=3af2f62fef
- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/23/athens-wildfires-people-fleeing-homes-still-tourists-fly-in
https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/the-emergence-of-life-from/9781108735506-item.html
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