Reactance and Micromanagement

Reactance, sometimes known as psychological reactance, is the response to a loss of behavioral freedom, or to the perception of threats to behavioral freedom. For example, when pressed to perform a task in a new way, we sometimes feel an urge to perform that task in the customary way, or perhaps, in any way at all that differs from the prescription. Some feel this urge even if the prescription is aligned with their customary approaches. They react to being required to follow direction, even if they usually do it that way on their own. As a second example, when we're directed not to do something, we sometimes experience a strong urge — at times, a compulsion — to do that very thing, even when we had no prior desire to do it.

The widespread understanding of the concept of "reverse psychology" is evidence that most of us understand reactance at a very visceral level.

Reactance theory was first developed by J. W. Brehm in 1966. Here are its basic elements:

• People are free to choose from a range of free behaviors, which are acts they can imagine doing, or refraining from doing.
• People are likely to experience reactance in response to constraints on their ability to choose (or abstain from) free behaviors, or when they perceive threats to their freedom to choose.
• The magnitude of reactance increases with the importance of the behavior.
• Reactance is cumulative. Loss of a collection of free behaviors creates reactance more intense than the reactance associated with any one of the collection.
• People can experience loss of a single free behavior as a threat to other free behaviors.

Reactance plays a role in a range of workplace phenomena. One of the more obvious is organizational change, where it might account for what many call resistance. But one of the more fascinating and paradoxical is the role of reactance in both the need to micromanage and the reaction to being micromanaged.

Reactance as micromanagement

Some managers experience the managerial role as a constraint on their freedom to perform the tasks that belong to their subordinates. In a state of One of the more paradoxical
manifestations of reactance is
its role in both the need to
micromanage and the reaction
to being micromanagedreactance, they feel irrepressible urges to intervene in the work of their subordinates, because they — the managers — feel that only they can perform those tasks at the level required.

Reactance as a response to micromanagement

Most of us have strong negative responses to micromanagement. When we're micromanaged, we feel insulted, degraded, and even abused. Some of us are driven to anger, which can lead to behavior far less acceptable than the micromanagement itself. Certainly micromanagement is bad management, but almost as certainly, reactance is involved in the behavior exhibited by some of those who are micromanaged.

When next you observe a manager and a subordinate entwined in the dance of micromanagement, try to view the exchange with reactance mind.  Top    Next Issue

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For more about psychological reactance, see Psychological Reactance: A Theory of Freedom and Control, by Sharon S. Brehm and Jack W. Brehm. New York: Academic Press, 1981. Available from Amazon.

For more articles about reactance, see "Reactance and Decision Making," Point Lookout for April 18, 2012, and "Cognitive Biases and Influence: II," Point Lookout for July 13, 2016.

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