Reactance, noncompliance, and the identity process: Conceptual integration and empirical validation

Psychological reactance has been studied primarily as a situational variable but there is increasing evidence to suggest that individuals differ in their tendencies to perceive and act upon threats to freedom, particularly in the interpersonal realm. This study sought to elaborate the concept of reactance as an individual differences variable by exploring its developmental antecedents and its behavioral consequence in an important interpersonal context, the psychotherapy relationship.;A total of 90 client-therapist pairs participated in the study. Clients completed a packet which included a measure of psychosocial development based on Erikson's stage theory, and two reactance measures, the TRS and the QMPR. Therapists rated 61 client behaviors in terms of frequency of occurrence within the therapy relationship.;Results suggested that reactance may be multidimensional. The QMPR and TRS scales and subscales did converge on a developmental factor representing autonomy and interpersonal isolation, and on a client-in-therapy factor signifying interpersonal distancing behaviors. However, the reactance measures diverged in some important respects. The QMPR was negatively correlated with psychosocial health and global improvement in therapy. This scale was positively related to passive or diffuse behavioral means of resisting influence such as seeming not to hear the therapist's interventions. The TRS-Verbal Reactance subscale was positively correlated with many developmental health variables and was linked to situation-specific verbal strategies of resisting influence, such as disagreeing with the therapist's interpretations. The Verbal subscale was uncorrelated with global therapy outcome.;The TRS-Behavioral Reactance subscale correlated negatively with trust and intimacy. This subscale was associated with several direct verbal strategies of resisting influence, but appeared more generally related to pervasive concerns with control as manifested in such behaviors as premature termination, challenging of bill-paying, and nonspecific verbal negativism such as expressing sarcasm in response to the therapist's interventions. The Behavioral subscale was negatively correlated with global improvement.;The study validated the concept of reactance as an individual differences variable which is unequivocally associated with autonomy. However, the implications for psychosocial health and response to psychotherapy appear to differ according to subdimensions of reactance as measured by the TRS and QMPR.