Reverse Psychology
Sugar Shock
I’ll never forget the sight. I was living in Yerushalayim in those days and, having a bit of free time on my hands one morning, decided to pop over to visit a neighbor. When I tapped at the door of her apartment, she called out, “Come in!” So, I did.
In I walked, to find my neighbor sitting crossed legged on the floor with her very chubby toddler in her lap. She had a spoon in her hand and was feeding her little girl… sugar. Yes, that’s right. Spoonful after spoonful of the white, sparkly stuff. The child, of course, was lapping it up.
Seeing my stunned expression, my neighbor explained. “My daughter has such a sweet tooth! She’s very attracted to sweet things, and she’s gaining too much weight. So, I decided to use reverse psychology. I figure if I feed her tons of sugar, she’ll get so sick of it that she won’t want to look at it again!”
I was rather appalled. It seemed to me that the cure was worse than the problem! Interestingly, though, my neighbor had it right—up to a point. After that abundance of sugar, the toddler’s sweet tooth did abate… for a while. Sadly, the good effect lasted only for a few days. Then she went right back to indulging her sweet tooth whenever possible.
Although my neighbor’s “reverse psychology” had only a limited efficiency, I find it fascinating that it worked at all. What is it about reverse psychology that makes it so effective, at least over the short term?
Clearly, the idea has its basis in the fact that most people don’t like to be told what to do. I say “most,” because there’s undoubtedly a portion of the population that prefers being led and having someone else do their thinking for them. However, the majority of us have an instinctive aversion to being ordered around. Even, it seems, by our own Creator… which is perhaps why we are taught that a person receives more reward for obeying Hashem’s laws than if he does the same thing just because he wants to.
That being the case, someone along the way discovered what might seem to be a perfect solution. If you want someone to do something and they’re proving recalcitrant, you can simply use reverse psychology to achieve the desired results. Like Rav’s clever son who, knowing that his mother had a habit of giving her husband whichever soup he didn’t want, started telling her that his father wanted the other one.
At first, his righteous father was pleased; after all, he was finally getting the soup he’d asked for. But when he learned of his son’s ploy, he gently rebuked the lad on the grounds that it’s not a good idea to habituate oneself to lying. Still, no one can deny that the strategy worked. The contrary wife only had to hear that her husband wanted this soup, to make her determined to serve him the other one instead.
Some parents, at their wits’ end with independent-minded toddlers, try to use reverse psychology on them as well. If they want their child to do something, they tell him that they don’t want him to do it… thereby arousing in him an instant desire to do that very thing!
This is all very well if we want to go around manipulating our own children. While I don’t intend to judge anyone for using this method on occasion, I’d hesitate before advocating it as a prime child-rearing method. My point, however, is that reverse psychology is often quite effective. By tapping into the very human desire not to be bossed around, you can get someone to fall in line with your wishes simply by urging him to do the opposite.
Unintended Consequences
This approach can also—usually unintentionally—fall flat on its face.
Sometimes, if we’re not careful, we can unconsciously encourage our children to do the exact opposite of what we actually want for them. While we think we’re raising them with proper values, we are actually pushing them in the other direction. Two examples come to mind.
The first, less global one, is about the same Israeli neighbor who tried feeding her daughter sugar to wean her from sweets. My neighbor had a very messy home. The moment she walked into her apartment, her coat would land in one place, her pocketbook in another and her shoes in a third. She rarely put things away where they belonged, with the result that she lived amid minor chaos most of the time. She once explained to me why.
“My mother was very, very neat,” she said. “She always insisted that we put everything away and became very upset if we ever made a mess. After years of that, just the thought of keeping things tidy makes me tense up…”
The moment my neighbor was an adult and on her own, she abandoned the value that her mother had tried too forcefully to instill in her and ran in the opposite direction. We see this often when parents push their offspring too hard or too harshly. Children need to be guided, not hammered into submission.
Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, offered another, more widespread and also more tragic example. He said that a whole generation of Jews who’d immigrated to America had children who were lost to Yiddishkeit when their parents, trying their best to remain Torah-true under difficult circumstances, would regularly sigh and complain about how hard it is to be a Jew. Their kids picked up not the outward message, but the subliminal one. Instead of adopting the values and lifestyle that their parents were trying to instill, they ran away from those values and lifestyle as fast as they could.
Those early American Jews didn’t mean to use reverse psychology on their offspring. But it happened just the same.
Tact or Manipulation?
In dealing with the individuals in our lives who don’t like to be told what to do, we may be tempted to consciously resort to reverse psychology. However, the effects of such stratagems are very short-lived. You may get them to obey once or twice, but people aren’t stupid. Soon enough, they’ll see right through you. They’ll realize that you’ve been trying to manipulate their behavior. And then, you’ll have to deal not only with a recalcitrant family member, but also a resentful one.
A wiser method, depending on the person’s age, might be to drop tactful hints, leave interesting articles lying around, or offer tempting incentives. In a perfect world, everyone would behave exactly as they should, but our job is to try to bring a little more perfection into an intentionally imperfect world. When trying to mold our children or create a livable marriage, it can sometimes become necessary to employ stratagems. On occasion, we might need to be a little less than aboveboard in trying to achieve something worthwhile.
But it has to be done right. People don’t mind being “handled” if it’s done with love and respect. What they do mind, very much, is being manipulated.
The best method is to get them on board of their own free will. Not as easy as throwing a bit of reverse psychology at them… but, in the long term, so much more rewarding!
