Content area
Abstract
The development of a 30 item self-report measure to assess proneness to experiencing psychological reactance is reported. Reactance is the motivational state that arises in response to threats to behavioral freedoms; reactance stimulates efforts to preserve or restore the threatened freedoms. Community college students completed preliminary and final versions of the Reactance Proneness Inventory (RPI), as well as a number of measures of related behaviors and personality variables, in order to establish its convergent and divergent validity. The RPI showed excellent internal consistency (alpha =.90) and test-retest reliability (.89), and satisfactory convergent-divergent validity. Two existing measures of reactance proneness, the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (Dowd, Milne, & Wise, 1984) and Hong Reactance Scale (Hong & Page, 1989) were also included in the validation process. Associations of the reactance proneness measures with measures of personality variables and problem behaviors were lower than anticipated; possible explanations for these finding are discussed. Clinical applications and research implications of reactance proneness are discussed.
