Prosociality as persuasive appeals: considering altruism, solidarity, and reciprocity from a psychological reactance perspective

Drawing from recent literature on prosocial motivation, we devise three prosocial persuasive appeals, altruism, solidarity, and reciprocity, and test if they are persuasive in encouraging prevention adherence in the late COVID pandemic. Additionally, we explore how three prosocial appeals differ in persuasiveness through threat to freedom and psychological reactance. We use an experimental design (n = 895) and compare the three prosocial appeals with a conventional individual-benefit message and a no-message control. The results suggest conditional support for the persuasiveness of reciprocity message and the solidarity message but not the altruism message. The altruism message provokes the strongest psychological reactance, which explains its relatively low effectiveness.