Marketing’s Least Loved: Reactance bias
In her regular column for Mumbrella, VMLY&R chief strategy officer Alison Tilling looks at potatoes, phosphate, planes and the power of reactance.
Reactance bias is thought of as the “F.U. I won’t do what you tell me” bias, but reactance is more nuanced than that. Originally defined by Brehm in 1966, it is “the tendency to do the opposite of what someone wants you to do because you think they are trying to constrain your freedom of choice.” So if the constraint, or perception of constraint is missing, it’s not reactance.
The degree of reactance varies with the importance of the freedom that is perceived to be being constrained, and with the size and type of threat to that freedom.
Reactance is fascinating because, while it sounds negative, it can be extremely powerful if harnessed well – and can veer into manipulation if it isn’t. Reactance developed as an important motivational state, encouraging us to act to regain the freedom we see as constrained. The psychological reason for this is reward. We get more reward from a chosen behaviour when there were more choices about how to behave. Protecting choices matters to us, and reactance is a way to motivate ourselves to do it.
