Don't Read This
The power of reverse psychology: how I have used it in the field, how you can use it yourself, and how to spot it being used on you.
If you are reading this, the title has already done its job, which is mildly satisfying for me and slightly annoying for you. If it reeled you in, be honest and leave a like so I can measure the damage.
I guess that is the whole idea in miniature, the moment someone tells us not to do something, a small and slightly contrary part of us wants to do it precisely because we have been told not to. Psychologists call it reactance, the rest of us call it being human. We do not much like being told what to do, and a great deal of influence works by quietly using that fact rather than fighting it.
Reverse psychology is one of the more misunderstood ideas in the popular imagination. Most people picture it as a simple trick, telling someone the opposite of what you want in the hope they will do it out of sheer defiance. It is far more than that. I admit, at its heart, it is a form of manipulation, and in my line of work it is a genuine tool. I use it in social engineering and penetration testing, the part of security where a client pays you to get into the places and systems you are not supposed to, so the gaps can be found before someone with worse intentions finds them first.
From the field
Recently I was on a job that required me to get inside a building I had no business being inside. I will keep the where and the who to myself, for obvious reasons, but the human part is what matters.
There is a version of this work that people imagine looks like the films, all lock picks and ducking beneath cameras. The truth is far more ordinary, and far more about people. The single most useful thing I did that day was tell someone I did not want to cause them any trouble.
When a member of staff hesitated about letting me through, I did not push. Pushing is what triggers suspicion, because pressure is exactly what people expect from someone trying it on. Instead, I did the opposite, I told them not to worry, that I was quite happy to wait where I was rather than get them into any bother, and that I completely understood if they would rather I did not come through at all. I took every ounce of pressure out of the situation, and in doing so I removed the very thing that would have made them wary of me.
The moment the pressure was gone, the person relaxed, and a relaxed person talks. In the few minutes that followed I was not trying to get anywhere at all. I was simply chatting, and that easy conversation told me a great deal. I learned about them, about their routine, about who came and went and when, the ordinary rhythm of the place that us security people call pattern of life. I gathered more from being reluctant to enter than I ever would have done by trying to talk my way in, because the reluctance made me safe, and feeling safe made them open.
That is reverse psychology doing real work. By appearing to want the thing less, I was given more.
What is actually happening
There is solid psychology beneath all of this, and it is worth understanding, because once you can see the mechanisms you start to notice them everywhere.
The first is reactance, the engine of true reverse psychology. The theory was developed by the psychologist Jack Brehm in 1966, and it holds that when people feel a particular freedom being threatened or taken away, they are motivated to reassert it1. Tell someone they cannot have a thing, or that a thing is not for them, and you make it more attractive rather than less. It is why “this probably is not for you” can be so much more effective than a sales pitch, and why the surest way to make a person want to prove something is to gently suggest they might not be able to. Later work has shown the effect is real and measurable rather than folklore, and that the strength of it depends on how much the threatened freedom mattered to the person in the first place 23.
The second mechanism is the simple human instinct to be helpful, which is one of the most exploitable traits we have, and I say that with real affection because it is also one of the best things about people. We are wired to assist, especially when we feel useful and unthreatened. Lowering your own status a little, appearing slightly lost or slightly less capable than you really are, hands the other person the pleasant feeling of being the competent one, and competent people help. Appearing sharp and authoritative, counterintuitively, often gets you less, because it invites scrutiny rather than warmth.
The third is the relationship between withdrawal and pursuit. People tend to chase what seems to be retreating, and to volunteer what they think you are not especially chasing. Show slightly less interest in the precise thing you want, and the other person will often offer it up to fill the gap, because your lack of pressure reads as honesty. None of this is magic. It is simply the predictable shape of how people respond to one another, used on purpose rather than by accident.
How to use it, ethically, at work
You do not need to be getting into buildings for any of this to be useful. The same principles work in an inbox, a meeting and a difficult conversation, and using them to communicate more effectively is not manipulation, it is simply understanding people.
01 - Take reactance first, because it is the one I lean on most. On one job, dressed in hi vis and steel toe caps and looking for all the world like I belonged, I needed directions to a server room I had no right to be anywhere near. I did not ask confidently, because confidence can invite a challenge. Instead I said something close to, “usually a manager sorts this out for me, so I am not sure it is really your area, but is there any chance you could point me to the server room.” The person was suddenly rather keen to demonstrate that it was very much their area, thank you, and walked me halfway there. I had quietly suggested they might not be able to help, and reactance did the rest. You can use the same lever, minus the steel toe caps. “You probably will not have time for this before Friday” will frequently get a thing done sooner than a deadline would, because you have handed the person the chance to prove you wrong.
02 - The next is the one I find most reliable of all, and it costs nothing. When you want a moment of someone’s time, do not ask “is now a good time to talk.” Ask “is now a bad time to talk.” It sounds like a small thing and it is not, let me explain why - “Is now a good time” invites the person to check whether everything is perfectly convenient, and almost nothing ever is, so you tend to get a no. “Is now a bad time” offers them the easy, face-saving reply of “no, it is fine,” which happens to be exactly the answer you wanted. You have given them the comfortable option, and the comfortable option is yours.
03 - The same logic runs through a technique researchers call door in the face4 . Open with a large request you fully expect to be refused, and the smaller one you actually wanted suddenly feels reasonable by comparison. Ask your manager for three extra days on a deadline knowing they will balk, and the single day you genuinely needed feels like the easy compromise. Ask for a twenty percent discount and settle happily at ten. The refusal you expected does the work, because by turning you down once the other person is subtly more inclined to say yes the second time. Negotiators have relied on this for as long as there have been negotiations.
04 - There is real power in lowering pressure rather than raising it. If you want someone to open up, resist the urge to interrogate. People say far more to someone who seems relaxed and only mildly curious than to someone visibly hunting for an answer. The thread running through all of these is the same, avoid pushing because influence is far more often a matter of removing pressure than applying it.
How to spot it being done to you
Here is the part that matters most, because everything I have described can of course be used on you, and not always by people with your best interests at heart.
I watched it happen not long ago while protecting one of my clients. We were in an art gallery, the gallerist having quietly sized her up, remarked that most of his buyers do not take time to think, that if they have the money and they love the piece, they simply commit. To be quite honest, it was beautifully done. In a single sentence he implied both that hesitation was for lesser buyers, and, ever so delicately, that she might not be able to afford it at all. It was pure reverse psychology, built to make her prove herself by reaching for her bankcard. She is far too sharp for that, and she let the comment sit exactly where he left it. The piece went unsold that afternoon, which I suspect bothered him a good deal more than it bothered her.
The tells are surprisingly consistent once you know them:
Be alert when you suddenly feel the urge to prove yourself, because that is reactance being pulled, and ask who benefits if you rise to it.
Be alert when someone suggests that something is exclusive, or not for the likes of you, or that you probably cannot afford it or handle it, because that sentence is engineered to make you reach for the thing.
Notice when a person who clearly wants something from you seems strangely relaxed about whether they get it, because studied indifference is one of the oldest ways of drawing out what is being sought.
The single best defence is also the simplest, and it is the same one I wrote about in ‘The Art of the Con’.
Create a pause, manipulation of this kind relies on the response following hard on the heels of the trigger, before the rational part of your mind has caught up.
The moment you notice yourself feeling pushed, or oddly determined to prove a point, or quietly flattered, slow down. Ask what you would do if the emotional charge were not there. The pause is where your judgement lives, and almost nothing that is genuinely in your interest is lost by taking a moment over it.
Most people, most of the time, are simply being people. But knowing how influence works means that on the rare occasion someone aims it at you deliberately, you will recognise it for what it is, and recognising it is most of the battle.
Now, having been told at the very top not to read this, you have read all of it. I would apologise, but I think we both understand by now precisely why that happened.
Safety and Security. From someone hired to protect.
Sources
J.W. Brehm, A Theory of Psychological Reactance, Academic Press, 1966
J.W. Brehm & S.S. Brehm, Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control, Academic Press, 1981
J.P. Dillard & L. Shen, On the Nature of Reactance and its Role in Persuasive Health Communication, Communication Monographs, 2005
R.B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Harper Business, 2007
A very practical post.
Thankyou.
Great article. Title worked on me.