Template:Did you know nominations/Boomerang effect (psychology)

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The following discussion is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Harrias talk 07:27, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Boomerang effect (psychology)

  • ... that a persuasive message that creates an attitude change in the opposite intended direction is called a boomerang effect?

Expanded by Peabunny (talk). Self nominated at 10:37, 8 December 2013 (UTC).

  • Symbol possible vote.svg There seem to be several problems including:
  1. The expansion doesn't seem to be x5. My calculation is 14312 / 3817 = 3.75.
  2. There are many paragraphs without citations.
  3. The English seems weak. For example, the word intension in the lead seems to be a misspelling of intention.
Andrew Davidson (talk) 22:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Andrew for the feedback and comments.

  • I have corrected the misspelled intension.
  • Regarding the calculation, the last 13996 and 2803 are both edited by me. I just realized that the edition I submitted earlier was not right and corrected it yesterday. so the calculation might be instead 14312 / (3817-2803) = 14 ish.
  • Regarding the reference. I think there might be some issue with my ref editing. I noticed that user Mandarax has been helping to correct the ref mistakes in wiki editing.

I will keep correcting the wiki syntax. Thank you again for the comment and please let me know if there is more I can do.

Peabunny (talk) 01:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Symbol redirect vote 4.svg New reviewer needed. The above reviewer is indefinitely blocked. For the record, DYK says this article was at 5X expansion on the date of its nomination. — Maile (talk) 16:48, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Apparently, the reviewer has been unblocked. — Maile (talk) 23:41, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Symbol delete vote.svg The article still lacks citations for entire paragraphs such as the one starting "The tactic of reverse psychology...". More seriously, I am not sure that the article has a solid foundation. The basic idea seems to be to equate the boomerang effect with reactance (psychology) but that would make it a redundant content fork. But if you look at the history of the article, one finds that it started as a general account of boomerang effects, i.e. when an action backfires and is counterproductive. This is surely the general meaning of the phrase and we even have the concept on Wikipedia - see WP:BOOMERANG.

The article states that "Hovland, Janis and Kelly first recorded and named boomerang effect in 1953." but this strong claim is supported only by a citation of their own paper and that's not good enough. I find that Robert K. Merton identified multiple types of boomerang effect in his study of WW2 propaganda in 1949 - see Media And Audiences. That sociologist seems prominent in the study of such unintended consequences and it might be best for this article to be folded into that one again.

With such a major structural issue hanging over the article, I don't think we can promote it here. Sorry. Andrew (talk) 14:06, 28 December 2013 (UTC)