Motivational Analyses of Social Behavior: Building on Jack Brehms Contributions to Psychology

This book honors Jack W. Brehm's contributions to psychology, all of which revolve around a central theme of motivation and social behavior. It begins with two.
Table of contents


  1. Refine your editions:.
  2. Rex A. Wright (Author of Motivational Analyses of Social Behavior).
  3. Inside In Inside Out: The Kooks (Guitar tab edition);
  4. The Secret Cash Loophole - Copy and Paste Your Way To $297/Day Online!;
  5. Monitoring and Managing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 (HP Technologies);

Our paper gives rise to a new consideration, which starts from the point that threats are often unavoidable and the arousing reactance could therefore imply serious, negative consequences. Perspective taking seems to be one way of reducing reactance and thus a way of reducing the negative consequences caused by it. Furthermore it seems to support a positive relationship between the threatening and the threatened person. Nevertheless, further research is needed in order to clarify the processes underlying perspective taking to reduce reactance.

One possibility might be that the intervention of perspective taking leads to forgiving the threatener and therefore reduces reactance. Thus, individuals who scored high in their perspective taking ability also scored high in their ability to forgive. So on the one hand it could be the case that people with a high forgiveness ability can take the perspective of the threatener better than people with a low forgiveness ability and that this is why their amount of reduced reactance is higher.

Search | Van Schaik

On the other hand perspective taking could also function as a process of forgiving. This study gives rise to a lot of new, important questions concerning the avoidance or reduction of reactance in order to support a positive relationship. But perspective taking might not only affect the relationship between the threatener and the victim but also the relationship between the victim and its own future victims of freedom threats. Thus, one positive conesquence of taking the perspective of the threatener might also be that the victim might threaten others to a lesser extent, in the future, because they have experienced what it feels like to be threatened and to experience reactance.

In our everyday lives, we experience restrictions of our behavioral freedom. For example, employees are not allowed to choose between options but are forced to carry out certain tasks at a certain time. The resulting reactance often leads to resistance toward the threatener and negative consequences, such as negative working atmosphere, loss of motivation, decreasing productivity or possibly even to mob behavior.

To prevent these events, information about the phenomenon of reactance, and about perspective taking as an intervention aimed at avoiding reactance could be an important step in the right direction. Human beings are often faced with the conflict between the right to freedom on one hand and unavoidable threats to these freedoms on the other hand.

Reactance Theory

This is the case in cooperating teams, in which some people have to be subordinate and obedient, and may experience psychological reactance as a result. Our research introduces an effective intervention method of reducing reactance and of avoiding further negative conesquences. Furthermore it seems conceivable that there might be even more and stronger restrictions in locations where people with different cultural backgrounds live and work together.

With the knowledge of reactance as a cross-cultural phenomenon, cultural differences must be considered in order to intervene and to overcome restrictions. The results for these analyses are reported in footnote 2. However, these results should be treated with care because not only the imagined ingroup-member but even the imagined outgroup-member belonged to the group of students which can be seen as an ingroup. For this reason and because the in- and outgroup is not the main topic of this paper, we combined in- and outgroup to one variable. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U.

Author manuscript; available in PMC Jun Christina Steindl and Eva Jonas. The publisher's final edited version of this article is available at Psychology Irvine. See other articles in PMC that cite the published article. Abstract Previous research has demonstrated a considerable amount of negative consequences resulting from psychological reactance.

Reactance, Perspective Taking, Individualists, Collectivists. Introduction We all know the tragic romance of Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare, The Present Research In the present article our main focus is on finding an intervention method to reduce psychological reactance. Pilot Study In a pilot study we tested whether our reactance scenario really evoked reactance.

Method Participants and Design Participants were Austrian students from the University of Salzburg and Filipino students from different universities of the Philippines. Results To test our hypotheses, we conducted a 2 cultural group: Vicarious Reactance Furthermore, mostly in accordance with hypothesis 2 and with the results from Sittenthaler and Jonas and Sittenthaler et al. Open in a separate window. Table 1 Means and standard deviations for reactance behavior depending on the experimental manipulation: Discussion In the current paper we were interested in finding an intervention method to reduce the amount of reactance in two different cultures.

Limitations Nevertheless our findings should be treated with caution because we used a hypothetical scenario to evoke reactance in this study. Conclusion Human beings are often faced with the conflict between the right to freedom on one hand and unavoidable threats to these freedoms on the other hand. Footnotes 1 Initially we differentiated between a vicarious restriction of an ingroup -member and a vicarious restriction of an outgroup -member.

Close relationships as including other in the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Avis J, Harris PL.


  • Brehm, Sharon.
  • The Killing Room.
  • Theoretical Issues in Stuttering;
  • Site Navigation?
  • Belief-desire reasoning among Baka Children—Evidence for a universal conception of mind. How clients perceive therapist empathy—A content-analysis of received empathy.

    Ohio State nav bar

    Imagining how another feels versus imagining how you would feel. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Critical self-reflection and self-perceived altruism—When self-reward fails. Can feeling for a member of a stigmatized group improve feelings toward the group?

    Age and violent-content labels make video games forbidden fruits for youth. Development of empathy in Chinese and American children between three and six years of age—A cross-culture study. A theory of psychological reactance. Responses to loss of freedom: A theory of freedom and control. Academic Press; New York: Effect of a favor which reduces freedom.

    Search form

    Egocentrism, empathy, and altruistic behavior in young-children. Forbidden fruit versus tainted fruit: Effects of warning labels on attraction to television violence. Journal of Experimental Psychology: The costs and benefits of undoing egocentric responsibility assessments in groups.

    Reinterpreting the empathy-altruism relationship: When one into one equals oneness.

    Books and Media

    A social psychological approach. Effect of perspective taking on the cognitive representation of persons: A merging of self and other. Inattention to attractive alternatives provokes implicit relationship reactance.


    • Books and Media | Department of Psychology.
    • Send Us Mail;
    • Dr. Peter M. Gollwitzer.
    • Stupid History: Tales of Stupidity, Strangeness, and Mythconceptions Through the Ages.
    • SearchWorks Catalog.
    • On the nature of reactance and its role in persuasive health communication. Dowd ET, Wallbrown F. Motivational components of client reactance. Journal of Counseling and Development. The current state of empathy research. Journal of Counseling Psychology. When perspective taking increases taking: Reactive egoism in social interaction. Perspective taking and self-other overlap: Fostering social bonds and facilitating social coordination. Why it pays to get inside the head of your opponent—The differential effects of perspective taking and empathy in negotiations.

      Decreasing stereotype expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism. Understanding empathy—Integrating counseling, developmental, and social-psychology perspectives. Gniech G, Grabitz HJ. What a good idea. Skip to main content. Brehm, Sharon Sharon S. Editor and contributor of Seeing Female: Help for your child: A parent's guide to mental health services. The application of social psychology to clinical practice. A theory of freedom and control.

      Social roles and personal lives. For example, the empirical foundation of cognitive dissonance theory was research demonstrating that after choosing between two relatively attractive items, individuals enhanced the attractiveness of the chosen item and depreciated the rejected item Brehm These effects have been explained by suggesting that choosing an alternative eliminates the freedom of the individual to have the rejected alternative, thereby creating reactance.

      In another realm, research has demonstrated that an item a commodity or individual becomes more attractive when it becomes more scarce, distant, or difficult to obtain. Similar reasoning has been applied to explain why censored material is often more desired and influential than material readily available to the individual.

      In a unique twist, reactance theory has been applied to explain why desired behavior change in therapy settings may be achieved by discouraging the desired behavior paradoxical intervention , and to caution health communicators about overly strenuous efforts to dissuade an audience from engaging in risky behaviors e. Overall, reactance theory points out that for every force pushing in one direction, there will be a counter-force moving people away from this position.

      The counterforce will be strongest when a negated position or behavior is perceived as important and as comprising a free behavior. Postdecision Changes in the Desirability of Alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology A Theory of Psychological Reactance. A Theory of Freedom and Control. Physical Barriers and Psychological Reactance: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology