Characterizing Reactance in Communication Research: A Review of Conceptual and Operational Approaches

Psychological reactance, or simply reactance, has become a major concept of interest in communication research. Although this spike in scholarly attention has greatly advanced our understanding of reactance as a communication effect, its growing popularity has been accompanied by lack of conceptual and operational precision and agreement. This review characterizes the wide spectrum of approaches to defining, labeling, and examining reactance in communication research, summarizing major areas of variability. The overall landscape suggests that greater methodological consensus is needed, and there is opportunity to build on prior explications to hone the best approaches to measuring this phenomenon. Ideas for future research are offered to help guide (1) refinement and expansion of current prevailing methodologies, (2) development of measures appropriate to a broader range of communication contexts, and (3) use of more precise and consistent reactance terminology in the communication literature.