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Reverse Psychology? Briar Patching? Schmuck Bait?
Edited by CrypticMirror
None of those are quite what I'm looking for. Reverse Psychology and Schmuck Bait play on the target's perversity and/or curiosity, this plays on their ego. Or in other words, it's not about telling someone "I don't want you to do this" or "you shouldn't do this", but "I bet that you can't do this (though I'd like you to)." It might be too similar to be its own thing, but a quick once-over of Reverse Psychology shows only one example that might fit what I'm talking about, and I know it's more common than that.
Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"! is quite close, but too narrow. Dare to Be Badass seems to specifically be about the Call to Adventure, or at least grand, important things, whereas this can be more minor.
If it helps, the example I'm trying to place is this: Guy #1 wants information from Guy #2. Guy #2 doesn't like him and refuses to help. Guy #1 says something along the lines of "Oh well, I guess you wouldn't know anything important anyway." Guy #2 goes "Oh yeah? Try me!"
I don't think that would fit on any of the pages mentioned so far.
I still think this fits perfectly well under Reverse Psychology, tropes don't have to be exact fits. They can be about a general feel too, and this has all the feel of Reverse Psychology. I used to be on the Splitter side of Lumper Vs Splitter debates, but sometimes it seems there is a drive to get a trope as narrow as is humanly possible to fit incredibly specific circumstances. This way lies a hundred tropes with only a fraction of a degree of difference between them.
I don't mind going with that — the only reason I was reluctant to was that if that kind of thing was included under Reverse Psychology I'd expect to see more of it there, and since there weren't many examples of that type there I wondered if there was another trope under which they'd fit better. If that makes sense.
I disagree with the idea that it's Reverse Psychology. That's where you tell them to do something so that they'll do the opposite. This is more of a goading of the person by suggesting that they can't do something - that is, they're incapable of doing it.
It's definitely a lot closer to Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!, and can be thought of as a generalisation of that. After all, "oh, I guess you're not brave/smart/strong/whatever enough to do it" is basically an oblique way of saying "you're too chicken/stupid/weak/whatever". In fact, I'd suggest generalising that trope to cover all the possible permutations of it.
Is there a trope for the thing where a character gets another character to do something they were initially reluctant to do by saying something along the lines of "oh, I guess you're not brave/smart/strong/whatever enough to do it"? I feel like we have it, but I can't find it.