Crawford, M. T., McConnell, A. R., Lewis, A. C., & Sherman, S. J. (2002). Reactance, compliance, and anticipated regret. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38(1), 56-63.
The current work explored the relations among reactance, regret, and behavioral choice. A possible mechanism for reactance in opposition to persuasion attempts involves people anticipating greater regret for negative outcomes after complying with an agent of persuasion than for negative outcomes after reacting against an agent of persuasion. Some participants were asked to anticipate regret prior to making a behavioral choice in the face of ...