According to Brehm (1966), if a person’s freedom to behave as they choose is threatened in some way, then they will become motivationally aroused to either reestablish the lost freedom, or to ensure that there is no further loss. This hypothetical motivational state is referred to as psychological reactance. While resistance is defined as behavior against compliance, psychological reactance is ...

Psychological reactance theory posits that when people are faced with threats to, or elimination of, behavioral freedom, they experience an aversive motivational state (i.e., psychological reactance). Recent research indicates people’s of mind affects arousal processes. We hypothesized being in a threatening uncertainty would cause to less freedom-threatening communication than those certainty....

User workarounds are a growing problem in many complex system implementations including healthcare settings. Anecdotal evidence from the healthcare informatics as well as the information systems (IS) fields suggest that many system users are employing workarounds in order to bypass the system’s functionality. Yet, little theory exists on the topic. This study proposes a theoretical model to inv...

This study investigates the impact of hyperlink affordance, psychological reactance, perceived loss of freedom, perceived business tie between sites, and trust in source site, on trust in target site. Hyperlink affordance represents the extent that the Web encourages users’ behavior. Perceived loss of freedom is based on psychological reactance, which refers to the extent that users react to hy...

Psychological reactance occurs in response to threats posed to perceived behavioral freedoms. Research has shown that people can also experience vicarious reactance. They feel restricted in their own freedom even though they are not personally involved in the restriction but only witness the situation. The phenomenon of vicarious reactance is especially interesting when considered in a cross-cu...

This study examined smokers’ reactions to antismoking messages that emphasized either the harms of secondhand smoke or vulnerability to smoking addiction and framed the need for smoking cessation using either gain or loss message frames. One hundred fifty-four college smokers participated in a study that used a 2 x 2 factorial design crossing message type (secondhand smoke appeals, smoking addi...

Nudging people towards sustainable diets can help mitigate agricultural emissions. Recent debate suggests “nudges” have heterogeneous treatment effects in the population, including some backfire effects. In this paper, we present experimental evidence on backfiring to a nudge, after pledge for food choices. The effect is driven by people’s short-term intention eat sustainably. Specifically, com...

Despite persistent government and industry efforts to stop the sharing and downloading of media such as files over peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, this activity shows no sign of abating. This research investigated whether psychological reactance could account for variance in the intent to engage in, and the extent of such behaviour beyond that accounted for by the standard Theory of Planned Behavi...