“You must stay at home!” This is how the UK Prime Minister announced lockdown in March 2020. Many countries implemented similarly assertive messages. Research, however, suggests that authoritative language can backfire by inciting psychological reactance (i.e., feelings of anger arising from threats to one’s autonomy). In a series of three studies, we therefore tested whether commanding versus control and noncommanding messages influence several cognitive and affective indicators of reactance, intentions to comply with COVID-19 recommendations, and the compliance behavior itself. Although people found commanding messages threatening and felt angry and negative toward them, these messages impacted only intentions, but there was no evidence of behavioral reactance. Overall, our research constitutes the most comprehensive examination of cognitive–affective and behavioral indicators of reactance regarding commands to date and offers new insights into both reactance theory and COVID-19 communication.

“你必须待在家里！” 这就是英国首相在2020年3月宣布锁定的方式。许多国家都实施了同样强硬的信息。然而，研究表明，权威性语言可以通过煽动心理反感（即，由于对自己的自主权的威胁而引起的愤怒感）而适得其反。因此，在一系列的三项研究中，我们测试了命令与控制以及非命令消息是否会影响反应的几个认知和情感指标，遵守COVID-19建议的意图以及遵守行为本身。尽管人们发现命令性消息具有威胁性，并对它们感到愤怒和消极，但这些消息仅影响意图，但没有证据表明行为有反应。全面的，