Psychological Reactance as a Factor Affecting Patient Compliance to Physician Advice

This study investigated the dimensions of normal personality style associated with psychological reactance. Participants consisted of 326 graduate and undergraduate students. They took the California Psychological Inventory—Revised, the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS), and the Fragebogen zur Messung der psychologischen Reactanz (Questionnaire for the Measurement of Psychological Reactance). Results showed that the reactant individual has a personality style characterized by having a lack of interest in making a good impression on others, being somewhat careless about meeting obligations, being less tolerant of other's beliefs, resisting rules and regulations, being more concerned about problems and worried about the future, and being more inclined to express strong feelings and emotions. Separate analyses by sex on the TRS suggested that reactant women had a personality style that was more decisive, more sociable, and more self-assured than nonreactant women. Conversely, reactant individuals tended to be more concerned with problems and the future than did nonreactant individuals, although this difference did not appear for the subsample of women only.

User acceptance of new technologies is a key aspect to implement successful human-robot teams at work. The acceptance of new technologies, according to the Unified theory of Acceptance and Use Model, is determined by user's behavioral intention to use a technology and based on performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions. Furthermore, it is influenced by the experience a user has made with the new technology in the past. As not everyone can make their own experiences with robots in the workplace, many develop a first opinion by media consumption. To get an overview on media opinions on robots in working contexts, we extracted and coded the tone of headlines of three major English online newspapers. Subsequently, we compared the results of a human coding team with an open source approach for sentiment analysis. The comparison between human coders and the algorithm showed diverging results. Based on our analysis a team of human coders seems to be better in tone coding of short text passages like headlines. The overall results showed a negative overall tone in online newspaper headlines from 2016 to 2018. While 24% of the identified headlines had a positive tone, 43% contained a negative tone and 33% of the included headlines were coded as neutral. The negative tone in headlines on robots at work and their possible impact on workers expectations should be taken into account when introducing these new technologies in work contexts to ensure a human-centered implementation.

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 that people’s state of mind affects reactance arousal processes. We hypothesized that being in a state of threatening uncertainty would cause people to experience less psychological reactance to a freedom-threatening communication than those in a state of certainty. We randomly assigned 114 students from a North American University to an uncertainty- or certainty-inducing recall task; they were then exposed to a reactance-arousing message. Compared to participants primed to feel certain, those primed with threatening uncertainty reported significantly less threat and more positive attitudes in response to a freedom threatening communication. Mediation analysis revealed an indirect effect of feelings of threatening uncertainty on people’s behavioral intentions, through perceptions of the controlling message. Results support our hypothesis: people in a state of uncertainty experience less psychological reactance than those in a state of certainty.

The impact of client variables on psychotherapy is of both theoretical and practical importance. Reactance--the premise that individuals seek to maintain control over personal freedoms when threatened by a perceived loss thereof--has been shown to have an impact on the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions. Developing an effective means of quantitatively assessing this characteristic prior to treatment could facilitate treatment planning and maximize treatment outcome. The present study compared two paper-and-pencil measures of reactance: the Therapeutic Reactance Scale (TRS) and Resistance Potential (RP). Ninety-eight men and women diagnosed with depression completed both measures. The TRS and RP failed to correlate despite their presumed ability to measure the same construct. The RP exhibited extremely poor internal consistency, calling into question results that have been based on this measure. The TRS results provided evidence of convergent, divergent, and construct validity for this instrument.

PurposeThe authors investigate the impact of disclosure tones and financial risk on the readability of annual reports in the banking sector. The authors also examine the moderating effect of banks' financial risk on the tone–readability relationship.Design/methodology/approachThis study relies on the agency theory and the social psychology theory to formulate its testable hypotheses and explain the empirical findings. It uses a sample of 390 bank-year observations from banks listed in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Stock Exchanges during the period 2014–2019. It also employs random effect regressions to analyze the data and to examine the reverse causality/endogeneity in order to obtain robust findings.FindingsThis study’s results demonstrate that easy (difficult) to read annual reports is significantly associated with positive (negative) tone. Bank managers characterized as “too positive/optimistic” and banks with higher financial risks publish less readable annual reports. The results also show that the interaction between negative tone and a bank's financial risk is inversely associated with reading difficulty, indicating that managers prepare easy text to clarify causes of their banks’ high risks, yet they communicate this easy text with a negative tone that reflects their feelings/emotions towards the financial risks of their banks.Practical implicationsThis study’s findings call for the use of a plain English text that bears a neutral tone and urge financial analysts to go beyond the financial aspects of annual reports. They also stimulate policymakers to draft policies, which ensure the presence of audit committee members who possess a broad expertise to uncover the linguistic issues embedded in the annual reports.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study dedicated to exploring the tone–readability association in the GCC's banking sector.

This study examined how psychological distance, both social and temporal, can be leveraged in prosocial health behavior messages to mitigate perceived psychological reactance. Following the construal level and psychological reactance theories, we conducted a 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design (N = 245), which manipulated naturalistic messages regarding a prosocial communications campaign. Structural equation modeling showed that far temporal distance combined with far social distance could significantly reduce threat to freedom and therefore positively affect attitudes and behavioral intentions toward prosocial health topics. The effect of social distance was found not significant, differing from past findings. Further, intertwined and parallel psychological reactance models were tested and discussed. We suggest the need for more psychological reactance research, particularly examining prosocial health behavior. Strategies for practical persuasion strategies in prosocial messages are proposed.

To date, power exertion strategies in intimate relationships have been studied primarily using R-methodology techniques (e.g., Falbo, 1977; Fablo and Peplau, 1980). These studies have most often produced a two-dimensional model of power exertion strategies. The model used by Falbo and Peplau (1980) is composed of two bidirectional dimensions consisting of a laterality dimension (bilateral to unilateral) and a directness dimension (direct to indirect). The aim of the present study was to determine whether using an alternative methodology developed to measure operant subjectivity, namely Q-methodology, would provide similar results to those found using R-methodology. Nonviolent, heterosexual couples who had been married or living together for at least six months were recruited for the present study. Fifty-four participants (27 couples) completed three computerized Q-sorts based on the perceived usage of 60 power-exertion strategies from the self, partner and ideal-perspectives. In addition, couple members completed self-reports designed to measure intimacy (Miller Social Intimacy Scale - Miller and Lefcourt, 1982), relationship adjustment (Dyadic Adjustment Scale - Short Form - Spanier, 1976 and Hunsley, Pinsent, Lefebvre, James-Tanner, and Vito, 1995), impression management (Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding Impression Management Subscale - Paulhaus, 1991), psychological reactance (Hong's Psychological Reactance Scale - Hong and Page, 1989), dominance (General Population Dominance Scale - Roy, 1981), machiavellianism (MACH IV - Christie and Geis, 1970), sex-role egalitarianism (Sex-role Egalitarianism Scale - Short Form - King and King, 1994), and perspective-taking (Self-dyadic Perspective Taking Scale and Other-dyadic Perspective Taking Scale - Long and Andrews, 1990). Frameworks derived from the Q-sort data indicate that participants actively use the dimensions of laterality and directness to describe their own and their partners' use of power exertion strategies in their intimate relationships. When asked to describe the ideal partner, participants used only the dimension of laterality. Overall, participants reported using significantly more bilateral and direct strategies in comparison to unilateral and indirect strategies. When describing their own power exertion strategies, women and those with lower levels of psychological reactance were more likely to exclusively use the bilateral/lateral dimension. In comparison, men and those individuals with higher levels of psychological reactance were more likely to exclusively use the directness dimension. When describing their partners' use of power exertion strategies, those individuals using primarily the bilateral/unilateral dimension were more likely to have higher levels of social desirability, higher levels of perspective-taking, lower levels of psychological reactance, and lower levels of machiavellianism, in comparison to those individuals who primarily used the direct/indirect dimension.

This paper presents a processing methodology for direct write E-beam lithography on insulating substrates. Processes suitable for use with negative tone SAL-601-ER7 and positive tone PMMA are presented. Both are three level processes and are used for fabrication of surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices with transducer electrode line space dimensions of 0.7 and 0.4 micron, respectively. The authors method involves spinning a film of a commercially available conductive polymer, known as TQV-501, as the final coating. A Leica Instruments EBMF 10.5 electron beam tool operating at an energy of 30 keV is used to perform lithography. SAW devices were patterned with these processes and then realized by metallization with aluminum via lift-off. A two level positive tone process was used consisting of a film of P(MMA-MAA) followed by a film of PMMA. This is followed by a final spin coating of TQV-501 to provide a discharge medium. The negative tone process consists of a film of SAL-601-ER7 which is followed by a film of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). A final film layer of TQV-501 is then applied. The PVA serves as both a diffusion barrier to prevent intermixing of the TQV-501 and SAL-601-ER7 during layering and later to prevent stripping the SAL-601-ER7 during the solvent strip of the TQV-501. Patterns are written in reversed tone form on negative resist to provide the proper final positive image tone suitable for lift-off. TQV-501 offers the advantage of simple application via spin coating and a soft bake and easy removal by stripping in solvent.

This paper explores integrating quantitative methods into Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine psychological reactance in face-to-face interactions. Although extensively studied in mediated contexts, psychological reactance – a motivational state triggered by perceived threats to autonomy – remains underexplored in natural conversations. Addressing this gap, the study investigates how reactance manifests and affects conversational dynamics, such as stance-taking and disalignments. Video-recorded interactions were collected where participants faced reactance-inducing conditions ( e.g. , limiting smartphone use). Using GAT2 transcription and multimodal annotations, a systematic triple manual coding was used to identify markers of reactance. For statistical tests, the averages of the coding decisions were used to utilize the interpretative flexibility inherent in coding. Quantitative analyses showed significant relationships: reactance correlated positively with perceived freedom restriction, negatively with stance, and predicted conversational disalignment. Findings demonstrate that integrating quantitative methods into CA enhances its capacity to analyze complex phenomena like reactance, linking interactional practices with psychological concepts and advancing methodological discussions within CA.

Low response rates remain the primary obstacle to the cost effective use mail surveys in market research. This study examines the efficacy of two cost-free techniques for improving the efficiency of this methodology. The effects of three different appear strategies and cover letter formats were examined in 3 x 3 factorial design. The egoistic appear produced higher response rates than either help-the-sponsor or social utility appears. This effect was most pronounced when the appeal was presented in the post script of the cover letter. Consistent with the results of a previous study, a control group which received no appeal manipulation yielded the highest response rate. Psychological reactance and self-perception theory were used to account for these results.

The increasing prevalence of online purchase of medications, specifically via social media platforms, poses significant health risks due to high chances of such medications being substandard and falsified (SF). The current study uses a 2 (persuasive appeal: fear vs. humor) x 3 (message repetition) mixed factorial experiment to investigate the effectiveness of persuasive appeals (on intentions to purchase medications online via social media referrals, mediated by psychological reactance (threat to freedom and anger), attitudes toward the public service announcements (PSAs), and viral behavioral intentions. ANOVA results showed the superiority of humor appeals compared to fear appeals in (1) reducing psychological reactance, (2) igniting favorable responses to the PSA, and (3) marginally reducing the intentions to purchase medications vial social media despite lower online engagement intentions (viral behavioral intentions). Pre-existing risk perceptions moderated these differences. A moderated serial mediation model, conducted using PROCESS models, was examined to assess the mechanism by which persuasive appeals and risk perceptions interact in influencing purchase intentions. Findings are discussed theoretically in regard to extending the psychological reactance model within the digital environment and practically in terms of public health, brand protection, and law enforcement recommendations.

Poster #243 EXPERIENCED AND ANTICIPATED DISCRIMINATION IN FIRST-EPISODE PSYCHOTIC PATIENTS: PATTERN, SEVERITY AND RELATIONSHIP WITH CLINICAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS. FINDINGS FROM THE PICOS PROJECT

Variables affecting the decision for numbers of embryos transferred

Interactions of dietary vitamin C and proline on growth performance, anti-oxidative capacity and muscle quality of large yellow croaker Larimichthys crocea

The aim of this study was to determine whether puberty plays a mediating role in onset of schizophrenia. The hypothesis was that there is an inverse relation between age at puberty (menarche) and age at onset in women. Competent and consenting individuals with DSM-IV-defined schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder and their mothers underwent a 45-minute interview to ascertain age at first odd behavior, age at first psychotic symptoms, age at first hospitalization, and ages at various indices of puberty. Information about substance use, head injury, perinatal trauma, and first-degree family history of schizophrenia was also obtained. In the women (N = 35), the earlier the age at menarche, the later the ages at both the first psychotic symptoms and the first hospitalization. There was no significant association between puberty and onset in the men (N = 45). Other than gender, none of the examined variables played a role in the interaction of puberty and onset of illness. In women, early puberty (whether through hormonal or social influence) was associated with later onset of schizophrenia. This effect was not found in men; in fact, the trend was in the opposite direction.