Template:Did you know nominations/Boomerang effect (psychology)

Boomerang effect (psychology)

 * ... that a persuasive message that creates an attitude change in the opposite intended direction is called a boomerang effect?

Expanded by Peabunny (talk). Self nominated at 10:37, 8 December 2013 (UTC).


 * Symbol possible vote.svg There seem to be several problems including:
 * The expansion doesn't seem to be x5. My calculation is 14312 / 3817 = 3.75.
 * There are many paragraphs without citations.
 * The English seems weak. For example, the word intension in the lead seems to be a misspelling of intention.
 * Andrew Davidson (talk) 22:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Andrew for the feedback and comments. I will keep correcting the wiki syntax. Thank you again for the comment and please let me know if there is more I can do.
 * I have corrected the misspelled intension.
 * Regarding the calculation, the last 13996 and 2803 are both edited by me. I just realized that the edition I submitted earlier was not right and corrected it yesterday. so the calculation might be instead 14312 / (3817-2803) = 14 ish.
 * Regarding the reference. I think there might be some issue with my ref editing. I noticed that user Mandarax has been helping to correct the ref mistakes in wiki editing.

Peabunny (talk) 01:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Symbol redirect vote 4.svg New reviewer needed. The above reviewer is indefinitely blocked.  For the record, DYK says this article was at 5X expansion on the date of its nomination. — Maile  (talk) 16:48, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Apparently, the reviewer has been unblocked. — Maile (talk) 23:41, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

The article still lacks citations for entire paragraphs such as the one starting "The tactic of reverse psychology...". More seriously, I am not sure that the article has a solid foundation. The basic idea seems to be to equate the boomerang effect with reactance (psychology) but that would make it a redundant content fork. But if you look at the history of the article, one finds that it started as a general account of boomerang effects, i.e. when an action backfires and is counterproductive. This is surely the general meaning of the phrase and we even have the concept on Wikipedia - see WP:BOOMERANG.

The article states that "Hovland, Janis and Kelly first recorded and named boomerang effect in 1953." but this strong claim is supported only by a citation of their own paper and that's not good enough. I find that Robert K. Merton identified multiple types of boomerang effect in his study of WW2 propaganda in 1949 - see. That sociologist seems prominent in the study of such unintended consequences and it might be best for this article to be folded into that one again.

With such a major structural issue hanging over the article, I don't think we can promote it here. Sorry. Andrew (talk) 14:06, 28 December 2013 (UTC)