Original title: Psychological Reactance and Persuasive Health Communication: A Review of the Literature
Psychological reactanceResistance that can occur when someone feels their freedom to choose is being threatened. is resistance that can arise when people feel a message threatens their freedom to choose. This review explains the theory and how communication researchers measure reactance. It summarizes studies of health messages, focusing on message features linked to resistance and on whether people’s trait reactanceA person’s general tendency to resist when they feel their freedom is threatened.—a general tendency to react this way—affects the response. It also points to questions for future research.
Imagine a friend telling you what to order at a restaurant. If they insist you must choose one dish, you may want something else just to keep the choice yours. The harder they push, the more the advice itself can get in the way. In this paper, that feeling of having your choice narrowed maps to reactance, and health messages are examined for features that may bring it on.
Health communicators need people to consider advice without feeling pushed or controlled. This review looks at message features linked to reactance and at whether people’s general tendency toward reactance changes their responses.
The abstract describes a review, but gives no details about how studies were selected or assessed. It does not report specific findings about which message features trigger reactance, or how strong those effects are. It identifies future research directions but does not specify them.
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Psychological Reactance and Persuasive Health Communication: A Review of the Literature — Tobias Reynolds‐Tylus — Frontiers in Communication — doi:10.3389/fcomm.2019.00056
Abstract licence: CC BY
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper.