A Failure to Communicate

The ways how resistance towards health messages manifests itself covers feelings of being infringed upon by a paternalistic state, skewed perceptions of what risk means, feelings of fear and denial, or moral judgments of one’s own and others’ behaviours (whereby people typically justify their own but condemn the other). These concepts are in fact related to the known phenomena of reactance and self-determination. Research on health resistance has contributed two central reasons for the deliberate disregard or dismissal of health messages by reasonable people: one, a different definition or interpretation of health and health maintenance (largely encompassing free-will ideas) and two, a suspicion of authority-driven science, medicine, and government-funded communication. These findings ask questions about a strict adherence to a particular idea of human health and life, and a particular format of communicating these ideas.