Assertive Language

What it is

Reactance theory says a person who feels their freedom of choice is being squeezed becomes motivated to restore it, often by doing the opposite of what they were told. Assertive language is the operationalisation of the squeeze in a message: the same offer written as an instruction rather than as a suggestion. Research in this area therefore manipulates wording and measures the chain it is supposed to set off, rather than trying to manipulate how free someone feels.

In effect

The only pooled estimate in a commercial advertising setting is Tsz Hang Chu, Diyi Liu and Hong Gan's review of 142 samples, which models the chain rather than the endpoints. Assertive wording raised the sense of having one's freedom threatened by a substantial margin, raised measured state reactance by a smaller one, and had a small but statistically significant negative effect on persuasion outcomes. The structure their modelling supported is a chain: assertive language raises perceived threat to freedom, which raises state reactance, which lowers persuasive effectiveness. The one moderator that survived was domain, with non-profit contexts producing stronger reactance than commercial ones.

The gap between those three magnitudes is the most interesting thing in the literature. Pushy wording reliably annoys people and costs very little.

What it does not say

It does not say assertive advertising backfires badly, and the pooled persuasion penalty is small. It also does not say when it will backfire, because the authors report that the substantial heterogeneity across studies could not be fully explained by the moderators they were able to code. They could not test product type for want of studies, could not test calls to action because nearly every assertive condition in the literature contains one and there is no variance left, and could not test message length because primary studies do not publish their stimuli.

Two moderators from outside that analysis are better specified. Ann Kronrod, Amir Grinstein and Luc Wathieu's three laboratory studies plus a search-advertising field experiment on environmental topics found that people respond better to pushy requests in domains they already think important, and need suggestion where they lack conviction. Yael Zemack-Rugar, Sarah Moore and Gavan Fitzsimons found that committed customers carry stronger compliance norms, anticipate feeling guilty if they ignore an assertive advert, and react worst, which puts the cost on a firm's most valuable customers.

One credit note. The brand commitment study is first-authored by Zemack-Rugar, and the trade book that popularised it credits the best-known name on the paper instead. The sample size and the liking figure quoted in that book were not verified at the paper and are not printed here.

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