An Examination of Message Elaboration as a Moderator of Psychological Reactance

Abstract

The current study advances the literature on psychological reactance theory by examining the moderating role of message elaboration on the reactance process. Participants (N = 512) were randomly assigned to a message condition (freedom-threatening vs. non-freedom-threatening language) in a between-subjects quasi-experimental design. Message elaboration was not manipulated but rather varied naturally. Two topics were examined (energy conservation and organ donation). Results demonstrated that freedom-threatening language was positively associated with perceived freedom threat for both topics. No interaction effect of message elaboration and freedom-threatening language on perceived freedom threat was observed for either topic. Findings are discussed in terms of the theoretical and practical contributions of the current study.

Keywords:

• Energy Conservation
• Freedom-Threatening Language
• Message Elaboration
• Organ Donation
• Psychological Reactance

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Percentages may not add up to 100% as participants were allowed to indicate multiple categories.

2. MLR corrects for nonnormality in data. Preliminary analyses revealed that anger was both skewed (|2.0|) and kurtotic (|2.0|) for both topics.