Imagine your government announces a new rule: cars will be banned from the city centre next year. Cue outrage. People shout about freedom, convenience, and unfairness. But a year later, when the rule is actually in place? Most of that noise is gone. The researchers Armin Granulo, Christoph Fuchs, and Robert Böhm wanted to understand this pattern, and now they’ve offered a compelling explanation, backed by large datasets and clever experiments.

Their study, published in PNAS (2025), shows that public resistance to restrictive system-level policies—think mandatory vaccinations, speed limits, or meat taxes—is much higher before the policy is implemented than after. This is not because the rules magically become popular over time, but because of how our minds work when we anticipate change.

The authors call it a “transition heuristic.” When a policy is still in the planning phase, we tend to focus on what we might personally lose—our routines, our autonomy, our comfort. That leads to psychological reactance: a feeling of anger or frustration when freedoms are threatened. But once the policy is in place, the focus shifts. We stop imagining the loss and start evaluating the new reality. Surprisingly often, it turns out to be… fine.

They didn’t just rely on theory. One part of the study looked at survey data from over 49,000 Europeans when indoor smoking bans were introduced. In countries like Belgium and Scotland, public opposition dropped significantly after the bans took effect. In another part, they ran experiments in the UK and Germany where people reacted more negatively to planned taxes or mandates than to the same policies already implemented, even when the scenario was entirely hypothetical.

Even more interesting: this pattern held regardless of whether people liked the policy idea or not. Reactance was a gut response to anticipated loss, not necessarily a thoughtful critique of the rule itself.

But here’s where it gets practical. In follow-up studies, the researchers showed that you can reduce that initial resistance. If people are reminded of the societal benefits—cleaner air, better public health, fewer accidents—their negative reactions soften. In other words, good policy communication matters—not just because it informs but because it helps people zoom out from their personal inconvenience to the bigger picture.

So, the next time a new rule sparks public fury, it might help to remember that some of that anger is psychological turbulence during takeoff. Once we’re cruising, things often settle down, though I do know exceptions are possible.

Abstract of the study:

Governments need to develop and implement effective policies to address pressing societal problems of our time, such as climate change and global pandemics. While some policies focus on changing individual thoughts and behaviors (e.g., informational interventions, behavioral nudges), others involve systemic changes (e.g., car bans, vaccination mandates). Policymakers may use system-level policies to achieve socially desirable outcomes, yet often refrain from doing so because they anticipate public opposition. In this article, we propose that people’s psychological reactance driving this opposition is a transient phenomenon that dissipates once system-level policies are in place. Using secondary survey data (N = 49,674) and experimental data (six studies; N = 4,629; all preregistered), we document that psychological reactance to system-level policies is greater when they are planned (ex ante implementation) than when they are already implemented (ex post implementation). We further demonstrate that this effect can be observed across various intervention contexts and provide insights into its underlying psychological mechanisms. Specifically, ex ante vs. ex post the system-level policy’s implementation, individuals focus more on the transition-induced personal losses than on the prospective societal outcome gains. In line with this perspective, we show that the decline in reactance to system-level policies after their implementation is mediated and moderated by the salience of personal losses, and that the initial reactance to such policies is mitigated by the salience of societal gains. These findings suggest that the public’s negative reactions to system-level policies are more transient than previously thought and can help policymakers design effective interventions.