The phrase "contrary tendency" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
It can be used to describe a situation where there is a conflicting or opposing force or inclination. Example: Despite the efforts of the government to improve the economy, there has been a contrary tendency among consumers to save rather than spend, leading to slower economic growth.
In addition, the observed air temperature increased as the sky view factor (SVF) increased during daytime, while a contrary tendency was observed during nighttime.
When Re < 500, the overall thermal performance of case3 is better than case1 but when Re > 500, it displays a contrary tendency.
The crystallinity of as-deposited coatings increased with the increase of substrate surface temperature, whereas the porosity showed a contrary tendency.
The steady-state infiltration rate (SIR) of the control treatment decreased with increasing intensity of rainfall while those of the natural restoration treatments showed a contrary tendency.
"If your swaggering about with hairy caps on your heads could possibly tend to put out the fires, even then I should despise you; but … it has the directly contrary tendency … the very existence of a corps of yeomanry in a neighbourhood, in time of peace, has a direct and natural tendency to produce these fires".
But though the want of trade and manufactures among a free and very martial people may sometimes have no other effect than to render the public more powerful, it is certain that in the common course of human affairs it will have a quite contrary tendency.
Late 18th-century Ulster exhibited diverse, contrary tendencies.
There'd be all those alternative pathways to the official ones and to those that made Londoners proud: there'd be quite contrary tendencies….
This interest in the unification of contrary tendencies found expression in two characteristically 19th-century forms: the suite of short pieces (as Robert Schumann's Carnaval) and the symphonic poem, starting with expanded overtures such as Beethoven's Leonore No. 3 and Felix Mendelssohn's The Hebrides.
Processes at different levels of organization, especially, may foster contrary tendencies.
Emerson really means to "accept," as he puts it, "the clangor and jangle of contrary tendencies" (CW3: 36).
