The impact of freedom restoration, message frames, and language variety on psychological reactance

Based on the theoretical notions of psychological reactance theory, the present study examines the effects of inoculation, message frames, and language variety on reactance and other cognitive and behavioral intensions. An online posttest-only experiment was conducted at a large, self-financed university in Hong Kong. The experiment had a 2 (message frames: gain vs. loss) by 2 (inoculation: messages with a freedom restoration postscript vs. messages without such a postscript) by 2 (language variety: standard Chinese vs. the colloquial form of written Cantonese) between-subjects factorial design, with the nature of the issue (organ donation vs. political consumerism) manipulated as a within-subjects factor. For promoting organ donation, messages using gain frames and standard Chinese generate less perceived threat to freedom. The threat to freedom resulted in psychological reactance and that reactance caused the respondents to perceive the messages as less persuasive, thereby dampening the behavioral outcomes.