#reactance

[willowreader]

I have tried to warn friends and family about the effects of Covid infections. I don't blame them for blowing me off when most of society has moved on. Mostly they see it as just another flu. The "You just have to live your life" comment is often used. This article helped me understand why most people just don't want to know.

[peeterjoot]

Impedance refresher.

[Click here for a PDF version of this post] Karl is taking his circuits course right now, which means that I get a chance to field some questions. I don’t get an excuse to think about this stuff any more. It’s fun material, since most of the ideas are all really simple, and you can figure out everything from first principles. Karl just started sinusoidal circuits, which I think is a bit exciting.…

[longhaulerbear]

As Covid continues to spread worldwide, many people are finding it difficult to accept reality. They refuse to examine facts, even when they’re presented in forms that are easy to comprehend. Instead, they insist on reclaiming an obsolete version of “normal” that involves large indoor gatherings without any precautions.

[sealed-valkyria]

I played this bullet hell flash game called Reactance 2 for some of middle school and most, if not, all of high school. I was never able to beat the secret boss.

I downloaded Flashpoint and beat it in ONE DAY. I am SO happy!!!

(PS: Anyone know what the secret code is for in this game that released in 2012?)

[askendy]

I don't want merch. I want content.

/genuine /not mad

L: The less I have to worry about money the more I can draw for free I am a freelancer and art is my job therefore it doesn't leave a lot of space for drawing outside of that.

[leche-flandom]

Although it now looks like these clowns' motivation appears to be more financial than moral, this is what pops into my head when I see screenshots of their anti-porn nonsense.

[promithiae]

Oh :( I've been watching it specifically to see final pam

the fallout show was great but I'm going to have to deduct a few points on account of the fact that FINAL PAM wasn't in it

[lets-get-ready-to-ramble]

Do you think in like, an urban fantasy setting, with a modern lab and chemistry knowledge you could brew super specific potions? Imagine getting a C on your lab final for Potions 238 because you didn’t balance your equation correctly and accidentally added 4 mols of salamander blood when you only needed 2. You lose points for incorrect titration, leading your potion of invisibility to last 10 minutes instead of 20. Would you treat each magical component as its own element/ compound or would you have to break it down into organic molecules? What does “enchanted” MEAN in terms of reactance!!! These are the real questions!!

[glitter-stained]

Tim dkrake was abused and overlooked by everyone in the hero community and dickwad Grayson was cruel to take away the only thing Tim had in his life.

Damian wasn't even chosen by bruce to be robin and has no skill over than being a greedy bitch to Tim for no reason and it's fact that dick tried to send Tim to Arkham because he thought the Tim was reverting to joker junior which isn't fair because tin was just looking for approval after being abused by his parents.

Nest time educate your self before coming for the only good robin

You guys I'm curious, because I'm pretty convinced that this ask (which i've seen all over my jason fan-account beloved moots) comes from a tim drake anti dedicated to make everyone dislike tim more. This theory comes from the fact that a) i've rarely seen a sentence more reactance-inducing than "nest time educate your self" and b) there is a form of performance art in the way absolutely none of this is true, like this is all verifiably untrue information. True poetry, it's gotta be satire. Also, bonus for tin dkrake, that was gold.

So:

(don't worry about the gerrymandering we can do the maths)

[lizzyscribbles]

You know what I realized yesterday through an event that I desire to never deal with again in my entire life?? Toga’s parents really did suck.

Today’s Rambling Thought: Toga, and why her parents deserve hell.

Picture this, it’s the evening, I’m getting ready to get on a discord call with my friend because we’ve been watching MHA together and we usually chat between episodes (it’s their first time watching the show, we’re in season three). I go to use the bathroom and what do I find?? Remnants!!! Of a bird!! I’m not talking about a few feathers here, I’m talking bones, a pile of internal organs, and a half mutilated wing covered in blood and God knows what else. Completely dismembered. Of course, there are two potential culprits in this crime scene, both cats. (I should mention these aren’t my cats, I was watching them for a friend), but I’m pretty sure the one circling my feel and meowing proudly is the one. So, I get to clean up bird guts at like 8PM, trying my hardest not to gag.

AND YOU KNOW WHAT I DID TO THE POTENTIAL CRIMINAL??

Nothing. I patted his head and gave him a scratch.

All this delightful context to put into perspective this realization that came to me later that night, how is it that I - someone who actually had to clean up a mutilated bird - nicer to a cat that ISN’T MY OWN than Toga’s parents were TO THEIR OWN DAUGHTER. Now I’m no saint, and I realize a cat and a human are completely different, but come on, for real guys?

I don’t think we’re told how old Toga is in the scene where she’s offering her parents the bird (if you know please share) but we know she’s a little kid. Like I’ve said before, I’m studying psychology in college and I worked with kids in foster care, so if I know anything at all it’s this: Children are little sponges, and they automatically want to do whatever it is you tell them not to do. It’s a natural part of development, and actually something we don’t really lose as we get older (the specific term is rebel psychological reactance I think). So it’s really no surprise that after years and years of being told nothing but no when it came to these urges she had, she eventually just snapped. The kids I worked with were the same, the longer they were in the shelter I worked at the less they felt inclined to listen when we told them no, and I don’t think I need to explain why that’s dangerous.

Now, I’m not saying that consuming another’s blood as a child or gnawing on yourself in your sleep is normal behavior or something a parent shouldn’t be concerned about, but there’s a reason therapy focuses on replacing negative coping skills with positive ones. Did they ever go beyond just calling her weird and creepy? Did they take her to a doctor get a blood test and find out if maybe there’s a reason she was doing this beyond just being freaky? Does she have an iron deficiency?? I’m just rambling now and that’s pure speculation, but no, they just kinda insulted her over and over, told her not to, and sent her to quirk counseling which IS NOT a substitute for actual therapy I’m sure. The bottom line here is that you can’t take something away and not add anything in. You can’t tell someone not to do something and not supplement it with something else.

It’s little wonder that once she snapped, she went straight to “I just want to do whatever I want”, because she spent her whole life being told not to be something. I think it’s easy to forget that Toga is still legally a child at the start of the series, one who has not been taught how to safely deal with her urges. No wonder she felt more at home with the league of villains, they gave her what she never got. No wonder Ochaco’s actions in the final chapter shocked her so much. She was never accepted for who she was until then. She was never treated like she was a normal person.

The people who were supposed to love her most in the world saw her as a disease to be rid of, and I that disgusts me more than a dead bird ever will.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk, I’m gonna go ramble about how, as an author and a fan, I love her end even if it makes me so sad, and Ochaco’s part in it.

[maskydoolovesbaldursgate]

Manipulation. An Astarion headcanon.

So, here Astarion has a problem. He just got caught attempting to bite Tav/Druge, revealing himself to be a vampire and personally pissing off possibly the worst traveling companion he could possibly piss off.

He's afraid for his life, as well he should be. Vampires are considered dangerous monsters, hence why he had kept his own nature a secret up until now. And now he himself has instigated a potentially deadly confrontation.

And he is right to be afraid. Right after being caught, killing him for his attempt is an option. But if he can keep Tav/Durge talking, maybe it won't be...

Anyway, I've been rewatching Dr Stone.

Gen, like Astarion, is a charlatan. His specialty is his ability to manipulate others to get what he wants.

In one episode, Gen explains psychological reactance. Basically, what happened in the episode is an enemy found our heroes and was about to kill them, but instead Gen was able to shift to conversation, bit by bit, until they were instead talking about forming an alliance. Then Gen offered a condition of the alliance he knew this guy would not accept, so the condition would be rejected. The enemy would take the alliance without offering any concession and feel like he won the exchange, forgetting what it was about in the first place. (Anyway you should totally watch Dr. Stone. It's an excellent anime.)

Anyway, back to Baldur's Gate. My HC is that in the conversation that follows, Astarion isn't seriously negotiating for blood. He's negotiating for his life. Instead of begging for his life, which would keep decision of whether or not to stake him the topic of the conversation, he shifts the conversation to be about whether or not to give him blood instead.

And it worked.

At this point, taking him is no longer even an option. Tav/Durge literally forgot.

It's a distraction. He has shifted the conversation to be about blood, expecting Tav/Durge to say no, so Astarion can take the refusal as defeat and walk away.

He doesn't get the blood he wants, but he gets to live another day.

If Tav/Durge agrees to give blood, however, he's genuinely surprised. He hadn't expected that at all.

But he'll certainly take it.

Anyway I don't actually know shit about psychology. I just thought it was cool. This sort of distraction would 100% on my ADD having ass.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved on our archive

People don’t listen to warnings.

It’s a thing.

For a while I became obsessed by a video recorded on the day of the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami. It shows an older white guy, probably a tourist, standing on the beach in Thailand watching as the water recedes and the tsunami comes into view. As people run, as the wave grows, he just stands there. People start shouting at him, desperately pointing to the wave, trying to warn him. The wave grows, rushing closer and closer. Even now when I watch this video I still think he’s going to move. Of course he never moves. He doesn’t move an inch. The wave comes ashore and swallows him. —Nate Bear, “Staring at The Tsunami”

Every time a hurricane hits, some people choose to stay even if they have the resources to leave. In fact, research indicates that 35-50 percent of residents leave during mandatory evacuation warnings. During Hurricane Ian in 2022, about 62 percent of residents evacuated. Evacuation orders only increase someone’s willingness to evacuate by about 4-6 percent. When governments aggressively enforce evacuation orders in dangerous areas, 90 percent comply.

The rest of them stay.

According to one study, about 60-70 percent of those who don’t evacuate have said it’s because they don’t have anywhere to go and can’t afford a hotel. That group includes the unemployed, the homeless, and the vulnerable. During Hurricane Helene, thousands of inmates have been left behind.

What about the ones who can leave?

These numbers line up with the rest of our problems. Time and again, about 60 percent of us listen to warnings. Many people want to listen but don’t have the resources to protect themselves. About 10-20 percent have the resources, but they refuse to take warnings seriously.

They’re the hurricane headbanger, but not as famous.

I’ve got a feeling that the hurricane headbanger can take care of himself, but there’s a large portion of the population who thinks they can take care of themselves when they can’t. This group routinely shrugs off warnings. When things get really bad, they soak up resources that should go to the ones who really need them, the ones who can’t evacuate, the ones who can’t protect themselves.

We’re not here to make light of natural disasters. We’re here to understand why, as we face an increasing number of devastating threats, a growing number of people don’t want to take them seriously. There’s a range of theories, including what Neil Weinstein called unrealistic optimism, the notion that people routinely believe bad things are more likely to happen to someone else.

Here’s another theory:

A psychologist at Duke University named Jack Brehm figured out this problem in the 1960s. He called it reactance. He published a handful of articles about it followed by a book titled A Theory of Psychological Reactance. His book inspired 60 years of research on the topic. It even informed the popular psychological trick known as reverse psychology. Brehm discovered something you've seen a lot over the last few years. When you try to influence someone's actions, they resist. When people feel a threat to their perceived independence, they get angry.

They try to restore their freedom.

They might ignore the warning. They might make fun of you. They might pitch a fit. They might punch you in the face.

It depends.

Reactance means that the ones who don’t listen to warnings perceive the loss of their freedom as the greatest threat of all.

They protect it at all costs.

Everyone has their own reactance scale. It lives on a spectrum. At one end, you have collectively minded people. They tend to focus on the greater good. They're more likely to give up certain freedoms if it means avoiding death and destruction. On the other end, you have rugged individualists who see almost every warning or suggestion as a threat to their personal freedom.

Here's the weird part:

An individualist will get angrier if a friend or relative tries to influence their behavior in a way that threatens their sense of personal freedom.

They're also more likely to resist advice or information coming to them through anyone promoted as an expert or authority figure. You'd think the opposite would be true, that individualists would be more inclined to listen to people among their ingroup. Nope, their thinking isn't rooted in logic.

It's rooted in narcissism.

The harder you try to influence them, the worse it gets.

They only become more aggressive.

Brehm found that you can't even do a favor for someone on the extreme end of the reactance spectrum. They feel pressure to return the favor.

They hate that.

People can also feel vicarious reactance.

In other words, they'll get angry if they see someone else getting angry about perceived losses to their personal freedom. They'll defend someone else's right to do something stupid, simply because it's their right.

Censoring or restricting someone's freedoms can often enhance the attractiveness of that freedom. It's the forbidden fruit at work. Take something away, and that's suddenly all they want to do. Tell them to wear a seatbelt. Tell them smoking is bad for them. Suddenly, it's the cool thing to do.

You can trigger someone's reactance overtly by using controlling language. But you can also trigger it indirectly, even accidentally. If someone happens to associate a request or a warning with something negative in their life, like a controlling spouse, then they're less likely to listen.

A lot of people get a real kick out of ignoring warnings. They enjoy disregarding advice from experts. They love harassing and ridiculing those of us who do take threats and warnings seriously.

It elevates them.

Individualists only tend to take warnings seriously when a threat becomes absolute. They wait until the volcano erupts. They wait until the waves crash ashore. They wait until the flames lick their skin. Only then do they react, and it's usually a panic-driven response to save themselves. They don't do anything to help anyone else, and their panic causes problems for everyone else.

There's a cultural component.

You see less reactance in more collectivist societies. You see more reactance in individualist societies. I think we can all agree that western countries, especially the U.S., pride themselves on their individual freedoms. Every single day, Americans celebrate their right to act stupid and do dangerous things.

It's getting to be a real pathology over here.

So, what can you do?

The research suggests you have to be as indirect and neutral as possible when trying to influence someone's behavior.

Even then, you might fail.

Again, it depends. You can be direct with some people. And with others, there's pretty much nothing you can do. You just have to leave them alone. We've seen how well neutral, indirect attempts work at getting individualists to change their behavior. Maybe you'll avoid making them angry, but they'll likely just ignore you, even laugh at you. So as we stare down more threats, along with all the other consequences of an overheated planet, don't be shocked at all the reactance you see. Don't be surprised when you see people wanting to cuddle with birds and drink unpasteurized milk, simply because someone told them it's a bad idea right now. By trying to help someone, you triggered their reactance. I wrote the first draft of this post a year ago. Since then, as predicted, sales of raw milk jumped 21 percent after reports of bird flu in milk samples earlier this year.

If there’s no hope of convincing some of these people, then we have to do the next best thing. We have to push back. We have to limit their influence on others, to try to contain the damage. We live in a society that spends far too much time platforming, rewarding, and catering to the reactance crowd. We give them too much credibility, which they’ve used to virtually destroy our institutions.

People don’t listen to warnings.

It’s a thing.

[faeribug]

MIND TRAPS

ANCHORING

the first thing you judge influences your judgment of all that follows.

CONFIRMATION BIAS

you favor things that confirm your existing beliefs.

REACTANCE

you'd rather do the opposite of what someone is trying to make you do.

SUNK COST FALLACY

you irrationally cling to things that have already cost you something.

DUNNING-KRUGER EFFECT

the more you know,the less confident you are likely to be.

BACKFIRE EFFECT

when your core beliefs are challenged,it can cause you to believe in them more strongly.

DECLINISM

you remember the past better than it was,and expect the future to be worse than it will likely be.

FRAMING EFFECT

you allow yourself to be influenced by context and delivery.

NEGATIVITY BIAS

you allow negative things to disproportionately influence your thinking.

[devilheartsblog]

I want to get this off of my chest, lately I figured out why I was ok with shipping Duman and Gantlos after breaking up a friendship, which in a way was kinda the reason why I hated the ship in the first place, other than some ideas people had which I personally didn’t like. Let me explain, or ramble about me processing part of some personal stuff happened the past month.

I’ve done some research because it was confusing to me, and apparently it’s something called “reactance”. Let’s say there’s something you might like, right? If you feel pressured into it then you might just avoid or dislike it. In my case I love multishipping and giving my favorite characters a harem. And my friend was just a really big Dumantlos fan and nothing’s wrong with it, but with their set dynamic that’s brought up constantly in our dm scripts (Duman being a piece of shit and Gantlos somehow not breaking up with him), and them telling me they want me to ship them and they’ll eventually convince me someday, I wasn’t really up in arms about this ship and would die on the hill of it being a meh ship I didn’t like.

Then one day, I kinda did, tho under specific circumstances and time travel shenanigans, and she realized that and went manic happy about it, like “YAY I FINALLY CONVINCED YOU TO SHIP DUMANTLOS” (btw she didn’t, I had ideas and scripted them, she didn’t contribute to those) and it made me super uncomfortable since I wasn’t expecting it, and when I got a grasp at what was happening, I asked they go back to hating each other. We argue. It’s a whole mess and I still feel uncomfortable about her celebrating especially since it raised a few questions. Was she always expecting it? Should I have not shared my ideas? Were all those scripts a mistake because I was enjoying an episodic plot that eventually led to this day of judgement and turns out I did the very thing I feared being pressured over?? I was uncomfortable, to say the least. But it’s not an exception tho since I got overwhelmed/confused by people celebrating and screaming before, in this case it felt like I couldn’t enjoy something simple and it got ruined for me. (I’m fine with it now tho but at the time I felt like I stumbled into something I didn’t truly want..)

However, after we stopped talking, I thought “…I can do what I want now. Wait…” (I’m still not sure why or what psychological explanation there is) and started making some Dumantlos content, not like a toxic or dysfunctional pairing, but just a simple, wholesome dynamic trying to work with their canon personalities as close as I can. Why? I guess just wanted to reclaim that stupid wizard ship so I’d feel better and heal from some mishandled experiences (I won’t go in depth but we both fucked up, mostly me, I want to be better)

So yeah @coredetenebris that’s pretty much why I said I didn’t like the ship but then made some shipping content. Felt pressured by a friend and once we stopped talking for good I was more comfortable with exploring that ship. I’ve finally figured why that was bothering me for so long and why I just went to shipping them after losing a friend, now it makes more sense.

Oh also fyi the pressuring by my ex friend was NOT MALICIOUS OR INTENTIONAL, it was more like a fan being super excited and wanting to share what they love, then miscommunication shenanigans happened, ok? Ok.

[ndhakdvsnnd]

i have been reading about psychological reactance.

Psychological reactance theory is based on two assumptions. First, PRT assumes people have a set of free behaviors they believe they can enact. According to Brehm, free behaviors are acts people have engaged in previously, are currently engaged in, and could be engaged in the future. The second assumption of PRT is that when people’s free behaviors are threatened or eliminated, they become motivated to restore their freedom. To be sure, people do not desire freedom, but its loss is motivationally arousing.

it occurs to me that its likely easier to achieve compliance in a target subject if you can appeal to their own sense of want and can make them believe they want it for themselves. it has to be so much easier than making a living thing disregard its own will entirely.

i am just a freak aberration.

it also occurs to me that one of the main benefits of not having to appeal to reason within subjects is the relative versatility in deploying them. versatility in allegiance isnt desirable in agents programmed by empire, but it would be a valued trait in the eyes of a third party manufacturer looking to maximize profits regardless of who they were selling to.

web denizens seem to struggle with this concept so i will clarify again that i was never propagandized. i was raised about as politically neutral as any one person could ever be. i dont want to talk about it beyond that.

as an aside, the wikipedia page for Free Will made me smile