Reverse Psychology Actually Works

Reverse psychology has become an enormous cliché. I think this peaked in 1995 with the release of the film Jumanji. (If you've seen it and remember it, you know what I'm talking about.) The problem is that most people look at reverse psychology in a very simple way. For example, you'd say "I don't care if you want to go risk your life jumping out of a plane" to try and convince someone not to go skydiving. This isn't reverse psychology—it's passive-aggressive. So let's leave that all behind and start from scratch.

If you're going to use logic reversals in your favour, you need to be subtle. Let's say you want your room-mate to do the dishes because it's his or her turn. There's always this approach:

"Hey, would you mind doing the dishes? It's your turn."

But in this example we're assuming your room-mate is lazy and the nice approach isn't going to get the job done. So what do you do? Something like this:

"Hey, I've decided I don't want to do the dishes any more and am just going to start buying disposable stuff. Is that cool with you? If you want to give me some money, I can pick up extras for you, too."

What this does is present the crappy alternative to not doing the dishes without placing any blame. Rather than being preoccupied with an accusation, your room-mate is left to only consider the alternative. This is how reverse psychology can be effective, so long as you say it like you mean it.

Never Talk About the Idea—Talk Around It

Getting someone to want to do something can be tough if you know they're not going to want to do it, so you need to make them believe it was their idea. This is a common instruction, especially for salespeople, but it's much easier said than done. You have to look at planting ideas in the same way you'd look at solving a mystery. Slowly but surely you offer the target a series of clues until the obvious conclusion is the one you want. The key is to be patient, because if you rush through your "clues" it will be obvious. If you take it slow, the idea will form naturally in their mind all by itself.

Let's say you're trying to get your friend to eat healthier food. This is a good aim, but you've got a tough enemy: they're addicted to the Colonel and need a bucket of fried chicken at least once a day. Out of concern you tell them to eat healthier. They either think that's a good idea and then never do anything or just tell you to stop nagging them. For them to realize what they're doing to their body, they need to have an epiphany and you can make that happen by talking around the issue.

To do this you need to be very clever and very subtle, otherwise it will be obvious. You can't just say "oh, I read today that fried chicken is killing 10 million children in Arkansas every year" because that's a load of crap and comes with an incredibly obvious motivation for saying it. If chicken is the target, you need to make chicken seem really unappealing. Next time you sneeze, make a joke about coming down with the avian flu. When you're ordering at a restaurant together, verbally convey your decision to order something other than chicken because you just learned how most chicken is processed by restaurants.

When you've done enough of these things -- and, again, with enough space between them so that it doesn't seem like odd behavior -- you can start being a little more aggressive and stop going with your friend to get fried chicken. You can also take proactive steps to improve your own health and tell your friend 1) what you're doing, and 2) how well it's working for you. After a few weeks, if your friend hasn't decided to reconsider his or her position on frequent fried chicken, you can casually mention it and they should be much more open to having a real discussion.