Universal connectedness: trait universality dampens psychological reactance

ABSTRACT

A sample of college-aged participants (N = 233) were exposed to a freedom-threatening, excessive alcohol public service announcement. Freedom-threat, psychological reactance, behavioral intentions to consume alcohol, and trait universality were measured following message exposure. Simple-mediation analysis revealed that psychological reactance had a positive indirect effect on the association between freedom-threat and intentions to consume alcohol. Moderation-mediation analysis revealed that trait universality negatively moderated the indirect effect of psychological reactance across three trait universality scores. This study provides support for the two-step model of psychological reactance and evidence that trait universality diminishes freedom-threat, psychological reactance, and behavioral intentions.

KEYWORDS:

• Psychological reactance
• health communication
• trait universality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Materials. The materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2023.2216929

Notes

1. Details regarding the power analysis can be found in the supplemental materials (see Appendix 1 that is located on the OSF site).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Russell B. Clayton

Russell B. Clayton (Ph.D., University of Missouri, 2015) is an associate professor, director of the cognition and emotion lab, and the university distinguished teaching professor in the School of Communication at Florida State University.

Katherine R. Dale

Katherine R. Dale (Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2015) is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at Florida State University.

Junho Park

Junho Park (M.A., Florida State University, 2021) is a doctoral student in the School of Communication at Florida State University.

Akansha Kharkwal

Akansha Kharkwal (Ph.D., Punjab Agricultural University, 2022) is a doctoral student in the School of Communication at Florida State University.