What is Inverse or Reverse Psychology? It works?

Reverse psychology – as we call it here in Brazil – or reverse psychology is the behavioral result of a dialogue or communication in which a person does the opposite of what is suggested.

Hello friends!

Reverse psychology or inverse psychology is well known in some media, such as advertising, although it is little known in psychology faculties, not least because its results are questionable. Inverse psychology – as we use to call it here in Brazil – or reverse psychology (reverse psychology) is the behavioral result of a dialogue or communication in which a person does the opposite of what is suggested, that is, inverse psychology occurs when someone is convinced by suggesting that they do the opposite of what is desired.

For example, in one of the Simpson episodes, the character Homer talks to himself:

Homer’s Brain: “Don’t you get it? You have to use reverse psychology!”

Homer: “This sounds very complicated.”

Homer’s Brain: “Okay. Don’t use reverse psychology🇧🇷

Homer: “Okay. That’s exactly what I’m going to do”

As we see, in reverse psychology the person does the opposite of what is asked. An example, also very used is:

“Don’t think of an elephant”.

Most people will think of an elephant. This is because in order not to have to think about something, we have to think first, in order not to think later. In this sense, provoking the behavior of thinking about something by asking the other person not to think is simpler and easier than using reverse psychology to get the person to do something. That is, when we tell someone “don’t do that”, it doesn’t mean that they will deliberately do it.

However, certain individuals against and what it has conflicts with authority can come to do. And this is what makes inverse psychology, interestingly enough, a possible technique – albeit uncertain in its results – within psychology and related areas.

What is Reverse Psychology or Inverse Psychology

The meaning of reverse psychology or reverse psychology is identical. Therefore, from now on, we will always talk about inverse psychology and we will try to give a more precise definition of the term. Jack Brehm, Phd. in Psychology, he developed the concept of psychology reactance to explain why certain people refuse to be persuaded to do something.

A person with strong psychological reactance will deny everything he is asked to do, believing that doing what the other tells or suggests is hurting his individual freedom to come and go. In other words, they are resistant to persuasion. In extreme cases, psychological reactance will provoke acts of contestation, even illegal ones, to go against a position that the person finds threatening. Thus, psychological reactance also explains a series of individual and group behaviors of political resistance.

But returning to our theme, inverse psychology is applied to make someone use psychological reactance in favor of who is giving the order or request. By creating an opposite request to the desired request, the person who reacts against it will be reacting in favor of what is really wanted for him to do.

For example:

The wish of the request: that the person does not step on the grass

Reverse Psychology: Step on the Grass

Result: the person don’t step in the grass.

Paradoxical interaction in psychology and coaching

Those familiar with the concept of paradoxical interaction may have associated this form of intervention with inverse psychology. The paradoxical interaction is used in systemic family psychology, in NLP and also in hypnosis and, more recently, in coaching. In the book “The Hedgehog Effect: The Secrets of Building High Performance Teams”, we find the following definition and examples:

“The paradoxical intervention involves prescribing the same symptom (involuntary behavior) that the client wants to eradicate. It is a complex concept often compared to reverse psychology. For example: a customer fears failure, so the coach asks him to fail at something; a given individual has problems with procrastination, so the coach suggests that he schedule an hour a day to procastinate. And so on.

The principle behind all of this is that we always engage in specific behaviors for a reason – typically, to meet a personal need (to protest, to get attention, to be helped, etc.). If a behavior is involuntary, the obligation to adopt it means that it will be controlled and, therefore, will become voluntary”.

It’s an interesting technique, but like inverse psychology, it should be used carefully and sparingly. Another example is someone who wants to stop eating chocolates. A therapist using NLP might ask her to eat as much chocolate as she can without stopping for the entire duration of a 20-hour weekend seminar. In the end, the person will probably be disgusted by the excess and stop eating chocolates, although extinction by aversion is also in use – which, in turn, is not the most effective.

But it is interesting to note that, when a person is on a diet, he is all the time in a speech to himself in which he says:

“I can’t eat chocolates”.

“I can’t eat sweets”

“I can’t eat pasta” and so on.

Paradoxically, when saying that we can’t eat something, we already feel like eating, don’t we? Therefore, in some cases, reverse psychology or the paradoxical interaction can work.

Conclusion

Anyone looking for the subject of inverse psychology may be wanting to use it to manipulate someone, whether it’s a boyfriend or a son or daughter. When seeing in practice that telling the other what to do does not work as expected, and when noticing that sometimes saying the opposite works more than saying what you want, you can place too much trust in this type of intervention that, in the long run, term, it will not sustain itself.

Like the boyfriend who asks his girlfriend not to send him messages on his cell phone anymore and she starts sending more and more with this request. That is, the boyfriend notices that asking her to stop texting (especially when they’re fighting) works more than asking her to. However, over time, the spell can backfire on the sorcerer, meaning she might actually stop sending the messages even when they’re not fighting.

In kindergarten, it would be chaotic if every request were paradoxical, if it were turned upside down and inverted:

“Don’t do your homework”

“Don’t shower”

“Don’t be polite to others.”

It is evident that if we say this many times to a child, he could even act like a “against” person, but what would happen when the correct thing was asked? As if she thought: “don’t step on the grass” or “step on the grass” which is the correct opposite of the opposite of what should I do?

Furthermore, it is obvious that the paradoxical requests of reverse psychology will not work with behaviors that are considered unpleasant. For example, when asking a teenager: “Aren’t you going to clean your wardrobe”, the answer will probably be “Okay. I wasn’t going to fix it.” Or if we pass the order: “You are forbidden to study mathematics”… what do you think would happen?

Thus, in very few cases is reverse psychology a useful and reliable technique. So the recommendation is like in Homer’s dialogue: “don’t use reverse psychology”. “You are prohibited from using reverse psychology from now on.”

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