Brehm and Sensenig (1966) showed that if an individual were given two choices and there was another individual giving their opinion on the choice then the person making the choice will show a preference for the choice that the person giving their opinion prefers. However, if the other individual tries to tell the person making the choice what choice to make then the person making the choice will reject the choice that the other person is telling them to make. This is known as psychological reactance. In my childhood there was a choice that I had to make that some would consider to be rather important. I was raised Catholic by my parents, and when I was younger I would go to church with them without asking any questions because it was all that I knew. However, as I grew older I began to question why do I go to church every week. I personally felt that I was getting nothing out of it and saw no reason to continue going, but I did not want to make my parents think that I was not respectful of their choice, so instead of not going at all I began to question them about why I was supposed to be going. During this questioning my parents began to tell me that I had to go and that I did not have a choice about it. Needless to say I did not take to this very well, and in line with the findings of Brehm and Sensenig (1966) I reacted to this attempt to impede my freedom to choose by choosing the other option, which was to stop going to church.
Brehm, J. W., Sensenig, J., (1966). Social influence as a functionof attempted and implied usurpation of choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4(6), 703-707.
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It's so weird that you have this story because this is so similar to how I stopped going to church as well. When I was younger I did the same thing and went blindly to church with my parents without ever discussing what was so special about church and why we went, and why oh why I had to get up early on Sundays. My parents were Presbyterian (I know, I know... it's almost as bad as Catholic, haha) and when I asked my dad why it we went to church he told me "because that is what we are required to do." I replied with some snarky comment about how I wasn't really required to do anything and my dad rounded on me in that horrible calm, pissed off voice and said "you will go to church, you have no choice in the matter." Well, that didn't sit right with me so of course I started to resent having to go and when I was finally old enough and had the courage to stand up for myself I finally stood strong and refused to go, which really just pissed my dad off. Excellent!
I have seen psychological reactance in a similar way with my parents and their religious backgrounds. My father grew up Catholic and my mother grew up Baptist. Needless to say, this created some conflict when deciding on which church to attend, especially when their children were born. My father and his family expected that my mother and the children would grow up Catholic--something that didn't settle well with my mother. Not that she any longer prefered the Baptist church, but having her freedom to choose threatened made her prefer many Protestant churches over the Catholic church. This feeling of threat has continued on with her children, and it has taken us a lot to be able to see the Catholic church from unbiased eyes largely due to my mother and us formerly feeling threatened that we had no choice but to belong to the Catholic church. Flashing forward to the present, although many factors have influenced my appreciation of the Episcopal church, learning about psychological reactance makes me wonder if at least a little bit of my love for a Protestant church has been encouraged by feeling that that choice was once threatened.
Ah Catholicism.. I'm pretty sure it loses more young people than any other religion -- and often for the same reason that you left.
As a person very susceptible to psychological reactance (and as a kid raised Catholic) my story should be the same as yours, but surprisingly it's not. I'm still so caught up in trying to be respectful of my mom's wishes and not wanting to let her down or make he feel as though she failed as a mother (because honestly that IS what she would think) that I still haven't told her I'm not Catholic. Every Sunday she calls me here at school and asks if I went to church, and every Sunday I lie and say "Yes," because I love her that much.
I can imagine though that if she ever did explicitly tell me that I HAD to attend church, I would do the exact same thing as you and directly defy her.
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