What is the psychology behind not wanting to perform a task after someone tells you to do it, even if you were going to do it anyways?
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There are some great answers here, but I’d say that the overarching psychological term is “crowding out” (turning intrinsic motivation to extrinsic motivation) and it’s a well known phenomenon in motivational theory. It’s when you push outer incentives (money, praise, punishment, etc.) on tasks that are intrinsically motivating (tasks you want to do). Sometimes it’s done in good faith, but it has quite negative consequences anyway. A famous example is paying money for blood donations might mean a decrease in blood donations, because suddenly it’s a transaction (blood for money – extrinsic) instead of something people do because it’s the right thing. Same task, but now you just get paid! Same mechanism is in play in your question, with outer incentives affecting the inner motivation for the task. Reactance would be an example of this, but also something benign as you wanting to surprise your friend with a nice cup of coffee, and they say “can you bring me a coffee?” might have that effect.
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