Over the next few newsletters, we will cover the Universal Laws governing suggestions, which are:

1.The Law of Reverse Reaction (a.k.a., "Reverse Psychology")

2.The Law of Repetition

3.The Law of Dominance

4.The Law of Delayed Action

5.The Law of Association

This month, we will discuss the Law of Reverse Reaction. As you may recall from my book, the definition of this law is stated as:

The Law of Reverse Reaction states that an individual will respond to the stronger part of a suggestion, if the alternative is presented as considerably weaker. For example "Your eyes are stuck shut. You can try to open them, but, the more you try, the harder they stick together." In this example the word "try" implies failure, a weaker suggestion to the command "stuck shut" so the applied law rejects the attempt to "try" and follows the command of "stuck shut".

Sometimes the dominant suggestion is a stronger emotion, for example, "The deeper you go, the better you feel." In this case the strong emotion is "feeling better" which is a reward for going deeper. The subject wants to feel good, so the suggestion to go deeper is accepted, overriding any desire to resist.

We can see a similar application of this law in what is known as the "Asymmetric Dominance effect". This is used frequently in consumer marketing and sales. If a consumer is given too many choices, or just two choices which are obviously very different, then they have trouble choosing any particular option. However, if you give the consumer 3 choices, where one is obviously different, and the other two are very similar, but one is clearly superior to the other, they will choose the better of the to similar choices.

Here is an example:

A B

Price $400 $300

Storage 30GB 20GB

In this case, some consumers ill prefer A for its greater storage capacity, while others will prefer B for its lower price. Now suppose that a new player, C, is added to the market; it is more expensive than both A and B and has more storage than B but less than A:

A B C

Price $400 $300 $450

Storage 30GB 20GB 25GB

The addition of C, which consumers would presumably avoid, given that a lower price can be paid for a model with more storage, causes A, the dominating option, to be chosen more often than if only the two choices in the first set existed. C affects consumer preferences by acting as a basis of comparison for A and B. Because A is better than C in both respects, while B is only partially better than C, more consumers will prefer A now than did before. C is therefore a decoy whose sole purpose is to increase sales of A.

An example when trying to get your kids to clean up their room. If you just ask them to clean up their room, you will get resistance on that single task, however if you give them a lot of things to do, for example, clean your room, take out the garbage, and mow the lawn, and wait for the expected push back, usually, "that's too much, to do", then offer back "ok, then just clean your room then." Your child will perceive the "less work" option as being of more value, and will gladly accept that option, which of course is what you wanted all along.

So, you may begin to notice variations of this Law in affect in different areas. These techniques exist everywhere and are utilized in many different applications, and now that you are aware of them, you will be able to notice them more easily, as well as utilize them more effectively yourself.

That's all I have for now.

Michael C. White, C.Ht.