The Psychology of the Irony of Book Banning

When a book gets banned, the people who are behind the ban are satisfied. Their children, their friend’s children, their children’s friends--none of them will be exposed to this book at their school library. Usually a book banning generates a good deal of publicity. Newspaper articles, school newspaper articles, online articles, online blog posts, online blog rants, sometimes a local radio or television show video or interview. Pretty much everyone who stays in the know about the news is aware of what happens.

Including the children.

If you tell a child they can’t have a cookie before dinner, that child wants a cookie even more. Sometimes the child may even find a way to sneak a cookie while your back is turned. This even goes for anytime a child shouldn’t have a cookie. For crying out loud, I remember sneaking into the kitchen at midnight to get a cookie out of our cookie jar at least once.

My point being…

Even "big kids" do this, as the picture clearly shows.

You tell a kid a book is bad for them and that kid is going to RUN to the nearest bookstore or library that has it and snatch it up and read it behind your back.

I thought this was quite amusing, since it is very true. I wanted to understand why we get reactions like this. So I Googled it. Apparently it’s called psychological reactance. According to Wikipedia: “Reactance is an emotional reaction in direct contradiction to rules or regulations that threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms.” In other words, people don’t like when other people tell them what they should do or that they can’t have something. Try to control people, and they are bound to rebel eventually.

It's just like on How I Met Your Mother when Barney wanted Robin back:

Ted: You only want her because you can't have her. It's like if I said "You can sit anywhere in this room except... that chair." Are you so petty that...

Barney: My chair! My chair!

If somebody doesn’t want someone to read a book, they should just tell all the kids it’s a REALLY BORING book. Then they might have a little bit more success in getting them to not read it. Although, in what universe will kids ever listen to that either?

I just thought it was interesting that banning books will sometimes have more of a reverse effect. It almost makes the idea of book banning laughable.