Exposure to Scientific Consensus Does Not Cause Psychological Reactance

Abstract

In a recent article, Ma, Dixon, and Hmielowski (2019. Psychological Reactance from Reading Basic Facts on Climate Change: The Role of Prior Views and Political Identification. Environmental Communication, 13(1), 71–86) explore whether scientific consensus messages activate psychological reactance. They find no main effect of the consensus message on psychological reactance, but a subsequent moderation analysis appears to show reactance among audiences who question the existence of climate change, especially Republicans. Here we attempt to replicate this finding in a large national sample of American adults (N = 6,301). Consistent with Ma et al., we find no main effect of the consensus condition on our measure of psychological reactance. However, in contrast to Ma et al., we find no evidence of psychological reactance among Republicans, conservatives, or those with dismissive prior views. Although people who question climate change are more likely to say that the 97% consensus message is manipulative, this main effect exists regardless of experimental condition, indicating that psychological reactance does not stem from exposure to the scientific consensus.