Reactance Bias

Reactance bias can help or hinder us in life. Use it the right way, and it’s a powerful driver. Get it wrong, and we’re going to stubbornly hang on to the bad stuff in our lives just because we can.

Let me tell you a story that shaped my entire career. When I was a lot younger, a teacher once told me that I wasn’t clever enough to be a doctor. In doing so, he inadvertently drove me to want to prove him wrong. Reactance bias kicked in, and I was motivated to study all the harder because I didn’t want anyone to take that future away from me. That teacher’s dismissive comment lit a fire that burned for years, fuelling late night study sessions and pushing me through medical school when things got tough.

But here’s the thing about reactance bias: it’s powerful, it’s reactionary, it’s rebellious, and it can give you real motivation if you use it in the right way. It makes you want something more if you’re told you can’t have it, and it makes you hang onto the things you’ve got, especially if there’s a threat of them being taken away. The problem lies with the fact that not everything you hang on to is good for you.

What Is Reactance Bias?

Reactance bias can cause you to hang onto what you don’t really need in your life, and more importantly, it can make you resist change that would actually help you. Brehm’s (1966) psychological reactance theory explains this beautifully. When people perceive a threat to their freedom of choice, they experience an unpleasant motivational arousal that drives them to restore that freedom. In simple terms, tell someone they can’t do something, and they’ll want to do it more.

Ask yourself this: are you hanging onto something just because you can? Or because someone is pressuring you that you need to get rid of it? These are critical questions, because the answers reveal whether you’re making choices based on what’s actually good for you, or whether you’re just being stubborn for stubbornness’s sake.

Sometimes a problem is the only thing someone has. It’s the only thing that makes them different, it could even be part of their identity, and it could be giving them control over others. However bad it is, that problem belongs to the person who has it, and it could be the only thing that person has any control over in their life.

The Identity Trap

I see this constantly in my practice. The patient whose entire identity is wrapped up in their chronic pain. The person who defines themselves entirely by a difficult habit they can’t seem to shake. The perpetual complainer who can’t let go of their grievances because without them, who would they be? Wicklund and Brehm (1976) showed that threats to behavioural freedom become threats to identity, which is why reactance can be so powerful and so destructive.

Suppose another person wants to take your problem away. The trouble with reactance bias is that it may make you want to hang onto your problem even more, or even do the opposite of what that person is suggesting you do, just because you can. Reactance bias also distorts our thinking if we feel we are being pushed into something, or we think someone is limiting our freedom of choice.

Fitzsimons and Lehmann (2004) demonstrated this in consumer behaviour, showing that when people feel their freedom to choose is threatened, they’ll actually prefer inferior options just to assert their autonomy. Think about how irrational that is. You’ll choose something worse for yourself just to prove no one can tell you what to do.

The Dark Side of Defiance

Reactance bias keeps people in their problems. Seldom do people use reactance bias to rise to the challenge and make their lives better. Far more frequently, it influences people to hang on to the things that are making their lives worse instead.

I often see examples of where reactance bias has got in the way of change. Sometimes a person will do anything to maintain their point of view or their old ways of thinking. Often in a consultation, it feels like a patient is reactively hanging on to their illness just to prove you wrong.

Miller and Rollnick’s (2012) motivational interviewing techniques were developed specifically to work around reactance. They recognised that telling people what to do, even when it’s clearly in their best interest, often backfires because it triggers reactance. Instead, they help people explore their own ambivalence and come to their own conclusions, sidestepping the reactance trap entirely.

I had a patient who was told by multiple doctors that he needed to lose weight for his health. The more we pushed, the more he dug in his heels. He’d miss appointments, argue about every recommendation, and resist any suggestion. It wasn’t until we stopped pushing and started asking him what he wanted for his own health that things shifted. Once he didn’t feel his autonomy was threatened, he could actually hear the advice.

Understanding Your Own Reactance

Some people are more prone to reactance than others. If you’re someone who bristles at any suggestion, who automatically finds yourself arguing the opposite position, who feels controlled by even well-meaning advice, you probably run high on this trait.

This isn’t necessarily bad. High reactance can make you independent, self-directed, and resistant to peer pressure. The problem comes when you can’t distinguish between situations where your autonomy is genuinely threatened and situations where someone is genuinely trying to help you.

I’ve learned over my years in medicine that the most effective way to help highly reactant patients is to offer choices, not commands. Instead of “you need to take this medication,” it’s “here are three treatment options, each with different benefits and risks — what feels right to you?” Same information, completely different psychological impact.

Reactance doesn’t just affect your relationship with your problems, it can affect your relationships with people too. Partners who constantly feel the need to assert their independence, employees who resist every directive, teenagers who push back against every boundary — these are all examples of reactance getting in the way. Research on reactance in relationship and workplace settings suggests that when people feel their freedom is threatened, they’ll sometimes act against their own interests just to restore a sense of autonomy: picking fights, withdrawing, or doing the opposite of what’s being asked, not because they actually want to, but because they can’t stand feeling controlled. The irony is that this often results in exactly the kind of breakdown that limits freedom far more than compromise would have.

Breaking the Pattern

So how do you break free from destructive reactance while maintaining healthy autonomy? It starts with recognising the pattern. When you feel resistance rising, pause and examine it. Is this resistance based on reason, or is it purely emotional reactance?

Ask yourself: if this exact same suggestion came from someone else, or if I’d thought of it myself, would I still resist it? If the answer is no, that’s reactance talking. If the answer is yes, maybe your resistance is actually justified, and you should listen to it.

Don’t hang onto your problem just because you can. Rather than having a choice, it’s way more important to make the right choice. Your autonomy is real, it’s valuable, and it’s worth protecting. But true autonomy means making choices that serve your best interests, not just choices that prove no one can tell you what to do. True freedom includes the freedom to accept good advice, to change your mind, to admit when others are right.

Use reactance to rise to challenges, to prove doubters wrong, to achieve what others say you can’t. But don’t use it to stubbornly cling to problems, or to reject help you need. The difference between these two applications of reactance is the difference between living a great life and living a diminished one.

Further reading

• Brehm, J. W. (1966). A Theory of Psychological Reactance.
• Miller, W. R., & Rollnick, S. (2012). Motivational Interviewing: Helping People Change (3rd ed.).
• Dillard, J. P., & Shen, L. (2005). On the nature of reactance and its role in persuasive health communication. Communication Monographs, 72(2), 144–168.
• Cialdini, R. B. (2006). Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
• Grant, A. (2021). Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know.