Experiment with a one-week follow-up · 2022
Reducing Psychological Reactance to Health Promotion Messages: Comparing Preemptive and Postscript Mitigation Strategies
Richards AS, Bessarabova E, Banas JA, Bernard DR
What it found
Health messages that felt more controlling made people push back. Reminding them that the choice was theirs, either before the message or in a short note after it, reduced that pushback equally, and the effect was still there a week later.
Where the evidence stops
Message wording about exercise and nutrition. It does not test notification frequency or apps.
How it shapes Pursue
Pursue
Pursue words every step as an offer, not an order. The choice stays with the person.
A design input, not evidence that Pursue works.
Cited in
- 01Why do I push back when an app tells me what to do?Because being pushed feels like losing a freedom, and people act to win it back; psychologists call this reactance. In an experiment with 394 people (Richards et al., 2022), simply reminding them the choice was theirs reduced the pushback against health messages, and the effect was still there a week later.Autonomy and wording
- 02Is there an app that notices when my day is slipping and suggests one next step?Tre-Up, an iOS app in development, is being built for exactly that, and it is not released yet: its AI, Pursue, is designed to notice when your focus or energy shifts and to answer with one small next step, one question, or nothing. Until it ships, your phone's focus modes and scheduled notification summaries cover part of the job.Timing and receptivity