University of Bamberg
open search form
You are here

Faculty of Human Sciences and Education

Junior Professorship for Health Psychology

  1.  University of bamberg
  2. Faculties
  3. Human Sciences and Education
  4. Academic Institutes
  5. Psychology
  6. Junior Professorship for Health Psychology
  7. News
  8. New study on reactance in health communication

New study on reactance in health communication

Calls to reduce meat consumption can impede behavior change by influencing attention processes.

Numerous communication campaigns try to convince people to adopt a healthy behavior. This can trigger reactance, a feeling of annoyance that leads to ignoring provided information or even reinforcing unhealthy behavior. A new study, which also involved researchers from the University of Erfurt, has investigated attentional biases as a possible cause of this so-called boomerang effect. More information on the background of the study, the method used and the interesting results are summarized in a post on the university blog (German only):

blog.uni-bamberg.de/forschung/2023/reaktanz-gesundheitskommunikation/

The study has been published in the Journal of Health Communication:

doi.org/10.1080/10810730.2023.2217098