The Theory of Psychological Reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm

Essay

The theory of psychological reactance (Brehm, 1966; Brehm & Brehm, 1981) states that when people feel that their attitudinal or behavioral freedom is threatened or restricted, they will be motivated to restore that freedom. Freedom restoration can be achieved (and has been empirically observed) in several ways, including (a) increased positive evaluation of the object that is restricted, and (b) increased negative evaluation of the entity responsible for the freedom restriction. For example, if the government proposed to eliminate an ingredient (e.g., high-fructose corn syrup) from certain foods, people who perceive that to be a threat to their freedom to choose what they want to eat will be likely to rate high-fructose corn syrup more positively, and rate the government more negatively, relative to people's responses had the government not proposed such a ban. Furthermore, satisfying one of these methods of freedom restoration should serve to restore the freedom, thus making the second method of freedom restoration less likely to occur. In other words, if items assessing DV-1 (e.g., attitudes toward corn syrup) are presented first, responses on DV-2 (attitudes toward the government) are not necessarily going to demonstrate a reactance effect; the same outcome would occur if DV-2 is presented first. However, previous research has not investigated whether such an effect of presentation order on reactance actually occurs, and you want to test it. How might you be able to construct an experimental design that can test whether the presentation of the first dependent measure will dampen participants' responses to the second dependent measure? Is it even possible - why or why not?