Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: Reactance to People, Rules, or Regulations That Threaten or Eliminate Behavior Freedoms.

Episode Date: April 25, 2022

Psychological reactance. Adverse reaction to People, or Rules, or Regulations That Threaten or Eliminate Behavior Freedoms.Extreme Ownership in the Classroom. K-12.It's bad enough. We need a true leader.Is it too late to join up at 35 years old?Wanting to give back. Charity.Can you set an ideal that's too high?Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko Underground Podcast number 49 sitting with here with Echo Charles. I wanted to talk about a little something called psychological reactance. Now, this is something that you know, that I know, that I've known about for a long time, but I haven't heard it. I didn't know this term. What this is, is the definition is, quote, unpleasant motivation. arousal or reaction to offers people rules or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavior freedoms end quote so what does that mean what that means is what that means is that

people don't like to feel their freedom of choice is being threatened in any way and what you hear I've heard me say for years And this is just something I would throw out there as if it was a fact and it kind of now is Is you hear me say people don't like have things imposed upon them you don't want to impose your plan on you don't force things on people That there's a psychological Phenomenon that backs up that quote feeling that I talk about This happens when you you know when someone says hey you can't do that and it makes you want to do it a little bit Right? We were talking about something earlier today I was like oh someone's

telling me to do something, telling us to do something. And that makes us, both of us feel like, oh, we would, we just won't do it just to spite them. Yeah. Or at the very least, you can't tell me what not to do. Like you're mad that you can't do it, even though you never want it to do it. Right. That right there is reactance.

That's psychological reactance. When someone says, hey, you can't do that and makes you want to do it more. And this is because, in my opinion, humans don't like to be controlled. right humans don't like to be controlled we tend to want to do the opposite of what someone is imposing on us this is by the way where the idea of reverse psychology which everyone's heard of plays off that's that's that the idea that it plays on like oh you you know hey echo you're not allowed to sweep up in here no watch me i'm going to sweep up you know like the tom sawyer you know example of you know you guys can't paint the fence you know no yes we can okay yeah okay fine so that's what that's what

that's what reverse psychology works on it works on reactants uh there's four elements to reactants or for i should say four stages maybe perceived freedom like this is what i think i'm i should be allowed to do threat to that freedom then you get the reactants which then provides restoration of the freedom. A couple interesting indicators. The more certain of the freedom, the harder the reactants. So it's something you definitely think you should be able to do. And I told you not do it.

You're going to have even more reactants to it. The higher importance of the freedom, the more stringent, the reactants. And here's an interesting point. They tie this to the fact that if I take one freedom away from you, you psychologically think if you take that one, you probably get to take it. more it's almost like a psychological slippery slope that we're getting into so it's important to understand this it's important to understand this for me to be able to sort of so to sort of quantify this idea that I've been expressing for years which is people don't like being told

what to do people don't like having ideas imposed upon them people don't like having plans imposed upon them and and and so this is where it comes from we all as humans have a psychological reactance we don't want to be told what to do we don't want to have our freedom of choice controlled in any way so then the question becomes how do you overcome this right well this is again something else i talk about all the time using the indirect approach making something someone's idea right i don't push the idea down their throat, I ask earnest questions to get them to say, oh, well, this, I think we should do this right now. Oh, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Now it's been your idea. Now you want to go and execute it, which is awesome. Saying something like, hey, echo, here's

the situation we're in. I think we should go in this direction, but it's your call. Right. Now I give you that little bit of freedom. You go, you know what? Here's what I want to do. And it allows you a little bit more freedom to think through the issue. Whereas if I say, echo, you need to do this front right now, you're automatically against it. And you might resist it. You might say, I'm not going to do that. Whereas if I say, hey, man, here's the situation.

It's your call, what we do. And it opens up your mind to actually do the right thing. And what this reinforces is the fact that once again, the indirect approach may seem like the harder thing to do. It may seem like the less efficient. thing to do, but this is another reason why the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line. In fact, that works on a piece of paper in geometry class in sixth grade, but in real world, the straightest, the closest distance between two points is rarely, if ever,

a straight line and the indirect approach is usually better. so there you go yeah the indirect you go around the mountains like okay so I was going up to Big Bear coming back and my son

he's five he goes why do these roads have to be so windy because they're windy and he technically it's not a bad question it's like yeah why is it why is it so windy

so you kind of let you say look at the freaking cliff bro no and I for sure didn't say it like that but I did say, however, I was like, oh, because they got to go with the contour of the mountains. Otherwise, like, where's the road? How are you going to make the road?

Unless you made one huge bridge or something like this, but that would take a long time and all this stuff. I says, but if you pay attention, this makes the most sense because you got to look where we're going. We're always next to the mountain look. And you see him, and for a long time, he's just looking at every curve and it started to make sense to him. And it's true. It's kind of the same thing. Where it's like, yeah, in a vacuum or in sixth grade geometry, whatever. Yeah, it's a straight line.

But in real life, it doesn't work like that because there's all these other factors. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of the one of the examples I'll use when I'm talking to clients and trying to explain the indirect of protum. You know, if you've got to get from point A to point B, hey, the easiest way is a straight line, right? Yes, of course. Well, what if there's a river? Yeah. What if there's a two ridge lines that you have to pass over?

And if you just go a little bit off course, you can go over here into a nice field, which doesn't have the river running through it. and it doesn't have any ridge lines and instead of it taking you whatever 10 hours to get across the ridge lines across the river you can just you can just get there in three hours

because you can go fast you're not gaining and losing elevation twice to get over ridge lines and risking some detrimental stuff by the way so very interesting the indirect approach I'm still trying to find the best way to explain this to people because it's counterintuitive. And it's counterintuitive because of what we learn in sixth grade geometry that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

And it only works on that piece of paper with, you know, Mrs. Jones, who's telling you how to get from point to point P. This is Viola Swamp? So there you go. What is the, okay, psychological reactants? Yeah. I don't remember that one. Yeah. It's a good one.

Because we all have it. You see it from your kids. Yeah. You know? Right? Yeah, yeah. Isn't that, okay, you know the idea of when people's, I don't know if it's the same thing, but that's kind of what I'm asking.

Maybe is this the real fundamental same thing? You know, when they say, don't, what is it, don't think of an elephant. And then you can't help to think of an elephant. I wonder if that has something to do with it. I don't think so. It's a similar thing, but that's more like once there's an ID in your head, like you can't, You can't process. You can't purposely turn it off.

Yeah. Whereas this is a natural reaction. Yeah. It's like, you know, every action has a natural and equal. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jocco underground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this. We're doing this to mitigate.

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