Blog 6: Attitude Change

I have a good recent example of psychological reactance, which is people's tendency to protect their freedom by taking steps to reinforce it when it is threatened (Wood & Quinn, 2003). The other day I got in a huge fight with one of my best friends. As all of my girlfriends are very close, like a family, everyone has been pretty upset that my bf and I haven't been speaking. They have all made attempts to talk to each of us and convince us to work things out. At first I got irritated when friend after friend approached me wanting to discuss things. Everyone knew I didn't want to talk about it because I needed time to think. Yet, every friend approached me, asserting that we needed to talk and that I needed to talk with my bf. Although I knew that I would have to work things out at some point, hearing that I must talk about it with anyone made me immediately want to talk about anything but the fight. Everytime a friend brought it up I found myself getting immediately irritated and defensive and responding adamently that I did NOT want to talk about it, even though I have been thinking about it almost non-stop. Then yesterday one of my friends called asking if she could come over later to ask me about spanish homework because we are in the same class. I said sure and when she came over we talked about spanish and a few other things. Before I knew it though we were talking about the fight. This time though, I found myself listening and actually discussing things with her. Because she didn't start out by announcing that we HAD to talk about things, my defenses didn't go up immediately. Because she used "reverse psychology" by claiming to want to talk about spanish, I was able to focus on what she was saying and not on protecting my right to decline to discuss things with her. In other words, unlike my other friends, this friend was able to avoid my psychological reactance by not forwarning me of her argument that I should talk to my bf and work things out. As a result, she was able to convince me and today everything got worked out.


Wood, W., & Quinn, J. M. (2003). Forewarned and forearmed? Two meta-analysis syntheses of forewarnings of influence appeals. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 119-138.