Prescriptive health messages frequently have limited success in changing minds, especially when perceived as threatening to a target audiences’ autonomy or sense of self. To understand the gaps of when health messages have adverse effects, this study uses reactance theory and limited capacity model for motivated mediated message processing framework to identify how message language directs resource allocation during encoding and how such language affects perceived message effectiveness, message recall, and behavioral intentions over time. Results across two studies, a lab experiment collecting electroencephalography (EEG) data (n = 30) and a national online survey using MTurk (n = 111) demonstrated that participants exposed to experimentally controlled anti e-cigarette messages with freedom threatening language experienced more reactance, increases in e-cig use intention and decreases in health information recall, despite no differences in ERP responses and self-reporting that freedom threatening messages were more effective relative to non-freedom threatening messages. Updates to these bodies of literature reactance permanence and language effects on resource allocation were discussed, as well as practical implications for better persuasive health message strategies.
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