User:Mitchellweed/Boomerang effect (psychology)

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In social psychology, the boomerang effect refers to the unintended consequences of an attempt to persuade resulting in the adoption of an opposing position instead. It is sometimes also referred to "the theory of psychological reactance", stating that attempts to restrict a person's freedom often produce an "anticonformity boomerang effect". In other words, the boomerang effect is a situation where people tend to pick the opposite of what something or someone is saying or doing because of how it is presented to them. Typically, the more aggressive something is presented, people would more than likely want to do the opposite. ''' For example, if someone were to walk up to a yard with a sign saying "KEEP OFF LAWN" the person would be more likely to want to walk on the lawn because of the way the read the sign. ''' If the sign read "please stay off my grass" people would be more likely to follow the directions.

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Reworded the lawn sentence below to make it more smooth.

For example, if someone was walking up to a yard and reads a sign saying "KEEP OFF LAWN" the person would be more compelled to walk on the lawn because of how they read the sign. If the sign read "please stay off my grass" people would be more likely to follow the directions.


 * Differences in Boomerang effect and reactance: They are the same, the terms are used interchangeably.


 * Deciding the keep the government health warning in the Persuasive health communication body paragraph. Added more information to section though.


 * Decided not the add anything regarding Covid-19 to keep this article non-specific.

Persuasive health communication[edit]
Researchers have reported that some public health interventions have produced effects opposite to those intended in health communication such as smoking and alcohol consumption behaviors, and thus have employed various methods to study them under different contexts. Ringold argued that some consumer's negative reactions on alcoholic beverage warnings and education efforts can be explained concisely by Brehm's psychological reactance theory. These results suggested that boomerang effects should be considered as potential costs of launching mass communication campaigns. Dillard and Shen also emphasized the importance of reactance theory to understand failures in persuasive health communication but argued that there be a measurement problem. They thereby developed four alternative conceptual perspectives on the nature of reactance as well as provided an empirical test of each. ''' Hyland and Birrell found that a government health warning on cigarette advertisements published in 1979 led to a "boomerang effect" leading to an increase desire to smoke after viewing the campaign. The results of their study indicated that the presence of a more aggressive health warning in an advertisement increased the desire to smoke and it decreased the perceived goodness of the advertisement. This means the people viewing the sign decided it was not a helpful campaign to decrease smoking. Another negative impact of this effect happens in drug and supplement marketing. Bolton et al.   researched how the marketing of health drugs and supplements lead to less healthy life style due to the drugs' marketing reducing risk perceptions and perceived importance of, and motivation to engage in, complementary health-protective behaviors. Consumers believe it is not important to have a healthy lifestyle if they use the drugs and supplements. '''

Environmental behaviors[edit]
Mann and Hill investigated the case of litter control and showed that the combination of different positive influence strategies could actually create boomerang effect and decrease the amount of appropriate disposal of waste. Schultz et al. (2007) conducted a field experiment in which the normative messages were used to promote household energy conservation where they found the descriptive message of neighborhood usage created a boomerang effect depending on the high prior household consumption. They also eliminated the boomerang effect by adding an injunctive message about social approval. Their results offered an empirical evidence for prior research on the theoretical framework for boomerang effects. ''' Swatuk et al. found a boomerang effect regarding a call of climate control action from locals after The Paris Agreement. The call was considered "maladaptation" due to it calling for displacement of communities from traditional lands. They suggest careful articulation of policy and program decisions to improve policy making. '''