心理的反発に関する発達的研究

The present study was designed to investigate the effects of threats to attitudinal freedom given by mothers on their children's psychological reactance. It was hypothesized that counter-attitudinal threats would produce greater amount of psychological reactance than attitude-consistent threats would. Two independent variables were used : threat (counter-attitudinal threat and attitude-consistent threat) and grade (2nd, 4th, 6th and 8th grade). Three dependent variables were used as indices of psychological reactance : verbal resistance attitude toward the mother-forced behavior, and attitude toward the mother-inhibited behavior. The following results were obtained. Counter-attitudinal threats produced greater verbal resistance, greater rejective attitude toward the motherforced behabior, and greater receptive attitude toward the mother-inhibited behavior than attitude-consistent threats did. As children were in higher grades, their psychological reactance showed a U-type change under the counter-attitudinal threats conditions, but no consistent change under the attitude-consistent threats conditions.