Do Descriptive Norm Appeals in Public Service Ads Reduce Freedom Threats? Examining the Effects of Normative Messages and Media Literacy Skills on Decreasing Reactance
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21616841 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Buduo Wang (The University of Texas at Austin), Siyan Li (0000-0002-2275-9531, The University of Texas at Austin), Natalie Brown‐devlin (0000-0002-8176-0647, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 1022-1032 |
| Publication date | 2023-04-16 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Health Communication (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1041-0236 • E-ISSN: 1532-7027 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10410236.2021.1989787 |
| PMID | 34665071 |
| OpenAlex | W3207354055 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 57 |
While health communication campaigns seek to encourage and promote healthy behaviors, they are not always successful. Health communication efforts may fail for several reasons, such as viewers experiencing excessive freedom threats and reactance. This study (n = 201) proposes and demonstrates that descriptive norm appeals in health PSAs can indirectly lead to enhanced behavioral intentions toward the message advocacy via reducing perceived freedom threats, inhibiting psychological reactance, and improving message credibility. However, this serial mediation was only found for message viewers with relatively low media literacy skills – precisely, who did not show considerable critical thinking toward media content. For participants who reported a high level of critical thinking toward media content, the use of descriptive norm appeals did not decrease freedom threats, nor did it indirectly affect behavioral intentions. The findings of this study contribute to the theory of psychological reactance and norms-based research. Both theoretical and practical implications are provided for health communication scholars and practitioners
Credibility · Health communication · Media literacy · Normative · Normative social influence · Pedagogy · Political science · Reactance · Social norms approach · Source credibility · Climate Change Communication and Perception · Media Influence and Health · Psychology · Social Media and Politics · Social Psychology
Educación mediática e informacional y pensamiento crítico
When is Injunctive Norms Messaging Counterproductive? Exploring the Effect of Language Variation in Social Norms Messaging on Psychological Reactance
Descriptive Norms and eHealth Use Among Older Adults
Leveraging Dynamic Norms to Reduce College Student Alcohol Use
EHealth Literacy and eHealth Usage Among Older Adults in Singapore
The Role of Choice and Descriptive Norms in Attenuating Reactance to BPA Risk Messages
Reactance Theory - 40 Years Later
How Behaviors are Influenced by Perceived Norms
Characterizing Reactance in Communication Research
Mapping the Social-Norms Literature
A 50-year review of psychological reactance theory
Examining the Use of Forceful Language When Designing Exercise Persuasive Messages for Adults
Further Evidence That Psychological Reactance Can Be Modeled as a Combination of Anger and Negative Cognitions
Moving Toward a Theory of Normative Influences
Reducing Psychological Reactance to Health Promotion Messages
The Role of Choice Clustering and Descriptive Norms in Attenuating Psychological Reactance to Water and Energy Conservation Messages
Helpful or Harmful? How Frequent Repetition Affects Perceived Statement Credibility
Media Literacy Interventions
Measuring Message Credibility
A Theory of Psychological Reactance
The effect of three types of arbitrary thwarting on the instigation to aggression1
The attractiveness of choice alternatives when freedom to choose is eliminated by a social agent1
The Nature of Psychological Reactance Revisited
A Re-Explication of Social Norms, Ten Years Later
An Explication of Social Norms
The influence of a descriptive norm label on adolescents’ persuasion knowledge and privacy-protective behavior on social networking sites
Inoculation and Mental Processing
On the Nature of Reactance and its Role in Persuasive Health Communication
A Review of School-Based Initiatives in Media Literacy Education
Reactance and the dynamics of disagreement
A focus theory of normative conduct
A study of normative and informational social influences upon individual judgment
Resistance to persuasion conferred by active and passive prior refutation of the same and alternative counterarguments
Toward Critical Media Literacy
Testing the Effects of Social Norms and Behavioral Privacy on Hand Washing
Mitigating Psychological Reactance
Explaining the Effects of Narrative in an Entertainment Television Program
Psychological Reactance and Persuasive Health Communication
Psychological Reactance and Promotional Health Messages
| Citations per year | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |