Reactance as a Persuasive Strategy: How Health Communication Can Harness Anger to Leverage Behavior Change

According to psychological reactance theory, individuals who perceive a threat to or loss of valued behavior will experience reactance - an amalgam of anger and negative cognitions that motivates an effort to regain behavioral freedom. The limited effects of health communication interventions have often been attributed to psychological reactance, and previous research has tended to focus on how to design health messages that mitigate this phenomenon. However, the motivational nature of reactance suggests that it might also be used to promote health. When people learn that external influences circumvent a positive health behavior, this information may elicit reactance, motivating them to exhibit that behavior. This idea found support in the results of a preregistered experiment (N = 358), showing that participants were more willing to reduce meat consumption when they experienced reactance after reading about how the food industry undermines self-determined dietary decisions. The findings indicate that harnessing reactance to leverage behavior change may offer a promising alternative to established communication strategies.