A few days ago our colleagues in Peques and more showed us a very curious video about the Reverse psychology. He is being one of the most viewed on the internet and, although yesterday Miriam already showed you in the Weekly Summary of Peques and more, I want to talk a little about him.
The Reverse psychology It is something like asking someone to do something to do the exact opposite. That is, offer the message you would never give because you know that the other person will want to do the opposite of what you say.
It is a technique that usually works quite well with children (and with many adults, do not fool ourselves), very related to that of “the more it costs me to get it, the more I want it” or “it is enough that they forbid me so that I want to do it. ”
In the commented video you can see a father and his son leaving home. The boy says he wants to go by car and the father says no, that walking. They start with a "no" the father and a "yes" the son and continue with the no-yes-no-yes until the father says "yes", at which point the child ends up saying "no". Then the father takes advantage and says something like: "Well, no, well, let's go."
Really it's an example of very simple inverse psychology, so much that it works only when they are very young and I really think not even that (I have ever tried this with my children and it has never worked). It seems rather a typical trick of the cartoons, of those that you say "would never work" and in my opinion the child ends up saying no following the joke, with a semi-smile, knowing that he says no when he would rather say yes. I do not believe that the father has convinced him, or that the result is really due to the child's desire to do the opposite of what they ask, but rather, the child really didn't care so much for walking (He begins to do so when the father says “we are leaving” and starts the march, which suggests that even if the father had not said “yes”, he would have walked equally).
In any case, whatever happened, and having recorded that the video example does not seem too revealing as far as reverse psychology is concerned, the topic seems interesting to me, because there are much more subtle reverse psychology techniques that can be used with children and adults which, in fact, have been used often when it comes to convincing children of something, adults to buy certain items, in love and even in everyday life.
As it seems to me a topic that gives a lot of play tomorrow we will talk about it again in a much more extensive post, with several examples so you can see how Reverse psychology.
I leave you again with the video, in case you have not seen it:
