notions would win support via the irrational course of psychological
reactance.
Of course, political ideas are not the only kind that are susceptible to
restriction. Access to sexually relevant material is frequently limited.
Although not as sensational as the occasional police crackdowns on
“adult” bookstores and theaters, regular pressure is applied by parents
and by citizens’ groups to censor the sexual content of educational
material ranging from sex education and hygiene texts to books on the
shelves of school libraries. Both sides in the struggle seem to be well
intentioned, and the issues are not simple, since they involve such
matters as morality, art, parental control over the schools, and First
Amendment freedoms. But from a purely psychological point of view,
those favoring strict censorship may wish to examine closely the results
of a study done on Purdue University undergraduates.^10 The students
were shown some advertisements for a novel. For half the students, the
advertising copy included the statement, “a book for adults only, restric-
ted to those 21 years and over”; the other half of the students read about
no such age restriction on the book. When the researchers later asked
the students to indicate their feelings toward the book, they discovered
the same pair of reactions we have noted with other bans: Those who
learned of the age restriction (1) wanted to read the book more and (2)
believed that they would like the book more than did those who thought
their access to the book was unlimited.
It might be argued that although these results may be true for a small
sample of sexually inclined college students, they would not apply to
students in junior and senior high schools, where the sex curricula
battles are actually being waged. Two factors make me doubt such an
argument. First, developmental psychologists report that as a general
style, the desire to oppose adult control begins quite soon in adolescence,
around the start of the teenage years. Nonscientific observers have also
noted the early rise of these strong oppositional tendencies. Shakespeare,
scholars tell us, placed Romeo and Juliet at the ages of fifteen and thir-
teen years, respectively. Second, the pattern of reactions exhibited by
the Purdue students is not unique and thus can’t be attributed to any
great preoccupation with sex that college students may have. The pattern
is common to externally imposed restrictions in general. Limiting access
to the book had the same effects as did banning phosphate detergent
in Florida or censoring a speech in North Carolina: The people involved
came to want the restricted item more and, as a result, came to feel more
favorable toward it.
Those who support the official banning of sexually relevant materials
from school curricula have the avowed purpose of reducing the orient-
ation of the society, especially its youth, toward eroticism. In the light
190 / Influence