Objective There is insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of various tones of
communication in modifying health behaviours. We examine the moderating role of …

Health-related media permeate our modern experience, from using an online search engine
to reading a pamphlet about vaccinations at the doctor's office or watching a television news …

While psychological reactance is often invoked to explain the unintended boomerang effects
of persuasive health messages, underlying processes that might explain how reactance …

This study investigated whether color cues in health PSAs affect people's experience of
psychological reactance to health recommendations. By integrating psychological reactance …

A second misunderstanding is that defensive responses to threatening health messages
involve mostly passive strategies such as avoiding or ignoring the evidence. Defensive …

This study examined how anger expression tendencies moderate the negative
consequences of state reactance. An experiment was conducted whereby participants (N …

Objective: Positively valenced appeals have received comparably less attention than
negative appeals. However, messages utilizing negative emotions have been repeatedly …

Health campaign effects may be improved by taking interpersonal communication processes
into account. The current study, which employed an experimental, pretest–posttest …

Two experiments tested the hypothesis that a positive mood can increase attendance to, and
systematic processing of, threatening health information, particularly when the information is …

Recent social influence research utilizing psychological reactance theory has focused on
how reactance motivates message rejection due to threats to perceived freedoms posed by …