Resistance and Persuasion
Resistance is a reaction against change. It is the ability to withstand a persuasive attack.
—> Often, resistance is linked to a person's stable quality. However, the concept of reactance
emphasized a different source of resistance: external sources.
—> Resistance can be affective (‘I don’t like it’), cognitive (‘I don’t believe it), or behavioral (‘I
won’t do it’).
The four faces of resistance, i.e. the different perceptual stances towards it:
1. Reactance (by Brehm): caused by external threats to one’s freedom of choice; initiated only
when the influence is directly perceived and when it threatens a person’s choice alternatives.
—> Two sets of factors determine the amount of reactance: 1) the more numerous and
important the freedoms, the greater the reluctance to lose them, and 2) arbitrary, blatant,
direct, and demanding requests will create more reactance than legitimate, subtle, indirect, and
delicate requests.
—> When people feel like their freedom is threatened, they can try to regain their freedom by
showing the opposite behavior resulting in a boomerang effect, dismissing the message or the
source, or demonstrating other unhealthy behavior as an alternative to the threatened unhealthy
behavior.
—> This view of resistance emphasizes the affective (‘I don’t like it!’) and motivational (‘I
won’t do it!’) sides of resistance.
2. Distrust: when a person displays a general distrust of proposals.
—> This view of resistance emphasized the affective (‘I don’t like it!’) and cognitive (‘I don’t
believe it!’) reactions to influence.
3. Scrutiny: general scrutiny that influence, offers, or requests create; when being the target of an
influence attempt, it is a natural reaction to attend more carefully and thoughtfully to every
aspect of the situation.
—> This view of resistance emphasizes the proposal itself and therefore primarily the cognitive
(‘I don’t believe it!’) element of resistance.
1
,4. Inertia: a quality that focuses more on staying put than on resisting change; showing resistance
simply because you do not want to change your mind.
The different categories of defensive responses to health messages:
1. Contesting: actively rejecting the issue or advocacy of the message through…
- Counterarguing: refuting the arguments presented in a message.
- Denial.
- Source derogation: claiming that a source is untrustworthy or unknowledgeable.
- Message derogation: stating, for example, that the message is exaggerated.
2. Bolstering: includes strategies that empower and strengthen the existing attitude or behavior
such as…
- Attitude bolstering: stressing why your current attitude is valid.
- Social validation: other people show similar behavior so it must be good.
3. Cognitive reappraisal: accepting the threatening risk presented in a health message but
adopting additional beliefs to reduce the threat. This can be achieved by…
- Downplaying the relevance to themselves.
- Fatalism: nothing can be done to decrease the risk.
- Risk normalization: accepting that risks are part of life.
- Religiosity: God decides what happens to me.
- Downward social comparison: other people behave much more unhealthily than I do.
4. Biased processing: concerned with processing a message in such a way that the message can
still fit with existing attitudes and behavior through…
- Weighting attributes: attaching more weight to information that is consistent with current
attitudes and behavior and less weight to inconsistent information.
- Reducing impact: actively avoiding a spillover effect of inconsistent information so that the
threatening information is isolated.
- Optimism bias: believing that bad things are more likely to happen to others rather than to
oneself.
2
,5. Suppression: the inhibition of emotions and threatening thoughts through…
- Hiding one’s fear.
- Alcohol or drug abuse might function as a way to suppress negative thoughts and emotions.
6. Avoidance: in general, people are motivated to avoid information that is inconsistent or
threatening. A distinction can be made between…
- Psychical avoidance: e.g. leaving the room when a health message is broadcast on television.
- Cognitive avoidance: ignoring or not paying attention to threatening health messages.
In which situations will people use which strategies?
• When people experience reactance, they will mainly use contesting and bolstering strategies.
• When resistance is motivated by a need for accuracy, contesting strategies are adopted.
• When resistance is elicited by the motivation to reduce threat or maintain a positive self-concept,
cognitive reappraisal/biased processing strategies and suppression are most likely adopted.
When resistance is reduced, persuasion is more effective. Some resistance-reducing strategies:
• Self-affirmation: asking people, before being exposed to a threatening health message, to reflect
on (unrelated) values and accomplishments that are important to them. This way they affirm their
self-integrity and are less likely to refuse and deny the threatening message.
—> This strategy is based on the idea that people are motivated to protect their self-integrity (the
notion that one is a good and moral person); moreover, it has been proven to reduce defensive
reactions toward threatening health information.
• Entertainment-education: a strategy that incorporates health and other educational messages
into popular entertainment media to positively influence awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and/or
behaviors.
—> Typical entertainment-education features like narrative structure, identification, and
enjoyment negatively affect the use of different resistance strategies such as counterarguing,
selective avoidance, and reactance.
3
, • Empathy arousal: both the affective and cognitive components of empathy, when activated
through a health message, can reduce resistance motivations and the adoption of resistance
strategies.
—> Two components of empathy: 1) affective empathy: the understanding and sharing of other
people’s negative and positive feelings, and 2) cognitive empathy: recognizing, understanding,
and adopting another person’s viewpoint.
Article 1: The Nature of Psychological Reactance Revisited: A Meta-Analytic Review
Psychological reactance theory by Brehm: explains why a persuasive message or campaign was
unsuccessful by explaining how individuals respond when freedom has been threatened or lost.
—> Until recently, reactance was considered to be a motivational state that could not be measured;
however, it is argued that it can be conceptualized as cognition and affect and made amenable to
direct measurement.
—> Reactance: ‘motivational state directed toward the re-establishment of threatened or eliminated
freedom’; within this definition, reactance cannot be measured. In other words, wanting to do the
opposite of what you are being told, possibly creating a boomerang effect.
So, in an attempt to make reactance more measurable, scholars looked at the possibilities for
conceptualizing reactance as either cognition and/or affect:
• Cognitive response approach: assumes that the impact of a message on attitudes is mediated by
cognition; i.e. counterarguing (= generating cognitions that disagree with the message).
• Negative affect in the form of anger: this view is consistent with descriptions of reactance as
‘hostility’ and ‘a negative emotional state’; having one’s freedom threatened is similar in form to
some of the causes ascribed to anger.
Thus, reactance might be considered as counterarguments and/or anger. Based on this notion, five
models representing distinct conceptualizations of reactance were proposed:
• The first two models presented reactance as being commensurate with either…
1. Anger = single-process affective model.
2. Counterarguing = single-process cognitive model.
4
Resistance is a reaction against change. It is the ability to withstand a persuasive attack.
—> Often, resistance is linked to a person's stable quality. However, the concept of reactance
emphasized a different source of resistance: external sources.
—> Resistance can be affective (‘I don’t like it’), cognitive (‘I don’t believe it), or behavioral (‘I
won’t do it’).
The four faces of resistance, i.e. the different perceptual stances towards it:
1. Reactance (by Brehm): caused by external threats to one’s freedom of choice; initiated only
when the influence is directly perceived and when it threatens a person’s choice alternatives.
—> Two sets of factors determine the amount of reactance: 1) the more numerous and
important the freedoms, the greater the reluctance to lose them, and 2) arbitrary, blatant,
direct, and demanding requests will create more reactance than legitimate, subtle, indirect, and
delicate requests.
—> When people feel like their freedom is threatened, they can try to regain their freedom by
showing the opposite behavior resulting in a boomerang effect, dismissing the message or the
source, or demonstrating other unhealthy behavior as an alternative to the threatened unhealthy
behavior.
—> This view of resistance emphasizes the affective (‘I don’t like it!’) and motivational (‘I
won’t do it!’) sides of resistance.
2. Distrust: when a person displays a general distrust of proposals.
—> This view of resistance emphasized the affective (‘I don’t like it!’) and cognitive (‘I don’t
believe it!’) reactions to influence.
3. Scrutiny: general scrutiny that influence, offers, or requests create; when being the target of an
influence attempt, it is a natural reaction to attend more carefully and thoughtfully to every
aspect of the situation.
—> This view of resistance emphasizes the proposal itself and therefore primarily the cognitive
(‘I don’t believe it!’) element of resistance.
1
,4. Inertia: a quality that focuses more on staying put than on resisting change; showing resistance
simply because you do not want to change your mind.
The different categories of defensive responses to health messages:
1. Contesting: actively rejecting the issue or advocacy of the message through…
- Counterarguing: refuting the arguments presented in a message.
- Denial.
- Source derogation: claiming that a source is untrustworthy or unknowledgeable.
- Message derogation: stating, for example, that the message is exaggerated.
2. Bolstering: includes strategies that empower and strengthen the existing attitude or behavior
such as…
- Attitude bolstering: stressing why your current attitude is valid.
- Social validation: other people show similar behavior so it must be good.
3. Cognitive reappraisal: accepting the threatening risk presented in a health message but
adopting additional beliefs to reduce the threat. This can be achieved by…
- Downplaying the relevance to themselves.
- Fatalism: nothing can be done to decrease the risk.
- Risk normalization: accepting that risks are part of life.
- Religiosity: God decides what happens to me.
- Downward social comparison: other people behave much more unhealthily than I do.
4. Biased processing: concerned with processing a message in such a way that the message can
still fit with existing attitudes and behavior through…
- Weighting attributes: attaching more weight to information that is consistent with current
attitudes and behavior and less weight to inconsistent information.
- Reducing impact: actively avoiding a spillover effect of inconsistent information so that the
threatening information is isolated.
- Optimism bias: believing that bad things are more likely to happen to others rather than to
oneself.
2
,5. Suppression: the inhibition of emotions and threatening thoughts through…
- Hiding one’s fear.
- Alcohol or drug abuse might function as a way to suppress negative thoughts and emotions.
6. Avoidance: in general, people are motivated to avoid information that is inconsistent or
threatening. A distinction can be made between…
- Psychical avoidance: e.g. leaving the room when a health message is broadcast on television.
- Cognitive avoidance: ignoring or not paying attention to threatening health messages.
In which situations will people use which strategies?
• When people experience reactance, they will mainly use contesting and bolstering strategies.
• When resistance is motivated by a need for accuracy, contesting strategies are adopted.
• When resistance is elicited by the motivation to reduce threat or maintain a positive self-concept,
cognitive reappraisal/biased processing strategies and suppression are most likely adopted.
When resistance is reduced, persuasion is more effective. Some resistance-reducing strategies:
• Self-affirmation: asking people, before being exposed to a threatening health message, to reflect
on (unrelated) values and accomplishments that are important to them. This way they affirm their
self-integrity and are less likely to refuse and deny the threatening message.
—> This strategy is based on the idea that people are motivated to protect their self-integrity (the
notion that one is a good and moral person); moreover, it has been proven to reduce defensive
reactions toward threatening health information.
• Entertainment-education: a strategy that incorporates health and other educational messages
into popular entertainment media to positively influence awareness, knowledge, attitudes, and/or
behaviors.
—> Typical entertainment-education features like narrative structure, identification, and
enjoyment negatively affect the use of different resistance strategies such as counterarguing,
selective avoidance, and reactance.
3
, • Empathy arousal: both the affective and cognitive components of empathy, when activated
through a health message, can reduce resistance motivations and the adoption of resistance
strategies.
—> Two components of empathy: 1) affective empathy: the understanding and sharing of other
people’s negative and positive feelings, and 2) cognitive empathy: recognizing, understanding,
and adopting another person’s viewpoint.
Article 1: The Nature of Psychological Reactance Revisited: A Meta-Analytic Review
Psychological reactance theory by Brehm: explains why a persuasive message or campaign was
unsuccessful by explaining how individuals respond when freedom has been threatened or lost.
—> Until recently, reactance was considered to be a motivational state that could not be measured;
however, it is argued that it can be conceptualized as cognition and affect and made amenable to
direct measurement.
—> Reactance: ‘motivational state directed toward the re-establishment of threatened or eliminated
freedom’; within this definition, reactance cannot be measured. In other words, wanting to do the
opposite of what you are being told, possibly creating a boomerang effect.
So, in an attempt to make reactance more measurable, scholars looked at the possibilities for
conceptualizing reactance as either cognition and/or affect:
• Cognitive response approach: assumes that the impact of a message on attitudes is mediated by
cognition; i.e. counterarguing (= generating cognitions that disagree with the message).
• Negative affect in the form of anger: this view is consistent with descriptions of reactance as
‘hostility’ and ‘a negative emotional state’; having one’s freedom threatened is similar in form to
some of the causes ascribed to anger.
Thus, reactance might be considered as counterarguments and/or anger. Based on this notion, five
models representing distinct conceptualizations of reactance were proposed:
• The first two models presented reactance as being commensurate with either…
1. Anger = single-process affective model.
2. Counterarguing = single-process cognitive model.
4
