(2015) conducted a meta-analysis based on 248 independent samples from studies that contained a treatment group exposed to a fear appeal; a comparison group (described by the authors as a group that was either not exposed to a message or exposed to a message specifically designed to not evoke fear, or exposed to a message meant to induce less fear than the treatment groups message); a manipulation of depicted fear; and a measure of attitudes, intentions, or behaviors. Maddux and Rogers (1983) argued that individuals who were high in both threat and efficacy perceptions would be motivated to protect themselves from the threat at hand and therefore the most likely to engage in adaptive, danger-control behaviors. How Blame and Shame Can Fuel Depression in Rape Victims, Getting More Hugs Is Linked to Fewer Symptoms of Depression, Interacting With Outgroup Members Reduces Prejudice, Practice Improves the Potential for Future Plasticity, How Financial Infidelity Can Affect Your Gray Divorce. If news stories are processed as fear appeals, this composition suggests concern that health stories are not reaching their potential to positively influence the health behaviors of audiences. There are multiple explanations for this need to share, including the need to verbalize experiences to help make sense of them, to help validate the self or confirm that people are still themselves despite this event, and to allow groups to develop collective social knowledge of emotional experiences. Pediatr Neurol. Additionally, audiences will be motivated to attend to message information that is consistent with the goals of the aroused emotion (e.g., protection, in the case of fear). How to Stop Your Mind When It Spins Out of Control. Preparing for your first therapy session beforehand can help manage anxiety. (2015, October 22). The physical experience of fear is generated by an extensive network of fear-related neural structures in the brain, particularly the amygdala (Lang, Davis, & hman, 2000; hman, 2008). The site is secure. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. Next, these cognitive perceptions form a feedback loop with fear, as well as interact with each other to either predict protection motivation (which then predicts message acceptance) or defensive motivation (which then predicts message rejection). However, fear appeals should not be seen as a panacea because the effect is still small. Despite accumulating evidence that fear appeals could be persuasive, the field remained without a good explanation for the mechanisms of these message effects. In essence, different types of audiences with different predispositions are likely to respond differently to fear appeals. Still, the CFM introduces the notion that the emotion of fear influences how carefully persuasive messages are processed, which in turn has implications for the direction and endurance of persuasive effect. Fear appeal is a typical marketing strategy that aims to affect behavior by inducing anxiety in individuals who are exposed to a frightening message. Although these meta-analyses focus on different variables used across different fear-appeal theories, together they provide helpful evidence for any theory that utilizes the variables each meta-analysis addressed. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the Further, at a more general level, fear-based messages that alert children to the importance of making self-protective decisions while they are still developing their schemas for health-related behaviors, such as regular teeth brushing or healthy eating, may result in the creation of sustainable habits that eventually result in improved health across the lifespan. One Personality Trait Predicts Longevity More Than OthersBut Why? A fear appeal is a persuasive message that attempts to arouse fear in order to divert behavior through the threat of impending danger or harm. Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication - PubMed Thus, the influence of the emotional arousal versus its related cognitions is often blurred. We encourage public health professionals to reevaluate their desire to use fear appeals in COVID-19 health communication and recommend that evidence-based health communication be utilized to address the needs of a specific community, help people understand what they are being asked to do, explain step-by-step how to complete preventative . This is because present-oriented goals are more important than future-oriented, protection-related goals when one perceives her timeline to be limited. Fear appeal is a psychological, sociological, and marketing term. Most notably, Leventhal (1970, 1971) argued that fear appeals evoked two separate but simultaneous processes: an emotional fear control reaction and a primarily cognitive danger-control reaction. The physical expression of fear not only represents the bodys readiness to protect itself, but it also serves a social function by warning others of nearby threats and alerting them that help may be needed. However, if efficacy appraisals are strong enough to dominate threat appraisals, the EPPM predicts that individuals will feel capable of addressing the threat and will then enact adaptive, danger-control behaviors. The authors found that though fear was the least common of the emotional responses found, tweets that did exhibit fear were significantly more likely than those that did not to contain a link to outside information and to contain requests for information, as well as interactive health information sharing between users. If the threat appraisals are more dominant than the efficacy appraisals, individuals will seek to diminish their aroused fear through maladaptive behaviors, such as denigrating the message source or rationalizing their unhealthy behaviors. Fear appeals obviously aren't limited to comets. Hope this helps Given that fear-based messages, which may be perceived as a more manipulative message style, carry a higher likelihood of defensive processing and reactance, fear appeals may be a risky message strategy to use for this age group. Fear appeals are a form of persuasive communication. Fear appeals are more effective for women because women tend to be more prevention-focused than men. Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D., are psychology professors at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. In essence, the fear depicted in the message is so great that rather than deal with it, people stop listening, viewing, or reading it. A campaign with gruesome photos of a person dying of lung cancer to combat smoking might make people think twice . Rooted in appraisal theories of emotions (e.g., Lazarus, 1991), the EFM argues that when a message contains information that is relevant to an emotions core relational theme, or the essential perception that underlies an emotional experience, that particular emotion is aroused. However, trait anxiety has been linked to other outcomes of fear appeals. It is very important not to lose sight of this, she said. Fear Appeals | Psychology Today Fear appeals are often used in public health service announcements and health behavior change campaigns. Disclaimer. Care, however, should be taken not to stigmatize or exhibit bias regarding the audience; doing so could possibly backfire. Fear can be such a powerful tool that campaigns have been developed focusing on fear appeals. Fear appeals are messages that try to persuade people about the potential harm that may happen to them if they do not accept the messages recommendations (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). Most directly relevant, Goodall, Sabo, Cline, and Egbert (2012) conducted a content analysis of print and electronic news coverage of the H1N1 virus from a fear appeal perspective, looking for the appearance of threat and efficacy information within the news coverage. Rather, the research on provider communication has focused on how the use of empathic communication by physicians may help reduce existing anxiety in their patients. The recently advanced emotional flow perspective (Nabi, 2015; Nabi & Green, 2015) builds on this recognition by arguing that messages, including fear appeals, evoke multiple emotions in sequence as the contents of the messages unfold. Multiple studies have supported the predictive power of the emotions-as-frames perspective, demonstrating not only that different emotion frames lead to different ways of viewing problems and preferred solutions but also that emotion is an important mediator of that process (e.g., Khne & Schemer, 2015). Scaring People to Improve Health Works, But Can Have Downsides : Shots I believe that most current approaches to anxiety fall short because they are predicated on the medical model, which views anxiety as an illness. APA 2023 registration is now open! Despite multiple theoretical perspectives advanced in the literature, no single model decisively captures the conditions of fear appeal effectiveness. Solved Fear appeals are often used in public health | Chegg.com Finally, given the expectation that emotional experience directs information processing and information accessibility, the EFM predicts that decision-making and action will be heavily influenced by these emotion-driven processes. Such curvilinear patterns likely result from minimal fear in response to the beginning of a message, stronger fear when an individual sees the threat component of the message, and resolving fear after seeing the efficacy component. That is, though significant relationships between fear and persuasion have been identified, meta-analyses have found mixed support for the threat by efficacy interactions predicted by the EPPM (de Hoog, Stroebe, & de Wit, 2007; Witte & Allen, 2000). Many studies on the effectiveness of fear appeals have been conducted. Some individuals, known as monitors, tend to experience more anxiety and prefer more, rather than less, information about health threats; whereas blunters instead avoid information related to threats. Goldenbeld, C., Twisk, D., & Houwing, S. (2008). All close relationships can elicit strong positive and negative emotions the parties have of one another. Indeed, in a systematic review of the EPPM literature, Popova (2012) found that two of Wittes (1992) propositions, (a) when perceived efficacy is at a moderate level, perceived threat will have an inverted-U-shaped effect on message acceptance, and (b) when perceived efficacy is at a high level, there is a reciprocal relationship between perceived threat and fear, have yet to be empirically tested. There can be feelings of disgust, anger, anxiety, or guilt. The protection motivation theory is an attitude-based model. Online ahead of print. Several theories have aimed to describe the effects of fear-based appeals on audiences, focusing largely on the cognitive correlates of fear (i.e., severity and susceptibility) and their subsequent impacts on persuasive outcomes. To help settle the debate, Albarracin and her colleagues conducted what they believe to be the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date. However, cautionary tales, which tell the stories of people who ignore the dangers of a forbidden act and suffer as a result, have frequently been used to encourage compliant behavior in children (P. J. Miller & Moore, 1989). Tannenbaum et al. The results replicated previous meta-analyses, demonstrating a significant positive relationship between fear appeal manipulations and attitudes, intentions, and behaviors (average weighted d = .29). Six children were among the dead after a Russian missile attack on Uman; Russian soldiers are likely being placed in improvised cells consisting of holes in the ground as punishment, the UK's MoD . crisis communication; emergency; global health; health communications; risk. It presents a risk, presents the vulnerability to the risk, and then may, or may not suggest a form of protective action. explains the conditions under which fear appeals are likely to succeed. National Library of Medicine Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging Empirical research, however, did not readily support the predicted curvilinear relationship between fear arousal and influence. We will refer to this as depicted fear to Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. A review of the literature on more general gender differences in fear may also help explain potential gender differences in responses to fear appeals. PostedSeptember 18, 2018 Print 2020 Jun 30. Health 366 (know these terms) Flashcards | Quizlet In a similar analysis, messages that included severity (d = .23) or susceptibility (d = .43) or both (d = .39) had stronger effects on outcomes than messages that did not include these threat components (d = .12). government site. At a methodological level, many studies of fear appeals fail to measure the emotion of fear itself as an outcome, instead analyzing only threat and efficacy cognitions. fear appeal. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara, Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies), Fear As Mental State Versus Message Component, Theories of Fears Influence on Risk Perceptions, Attitudes, and Behavior, Fear Messages and Patient-Provider Communication, Conclusion: Fear Appeals and Message Effects, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.266, Fear responses to threat appeals: Functional form, methodological considerations, and correspondence between static and dynamic data, Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change, Brave men and timid women? Psychological and behavioral responses to the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic: A comparative study of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S. NCI CPTC Antibody Characterization Program. There has been so much written about fear and the role of fear in risk-related messages that one can get easily overwhelmed with the voluminous responses to search queries for the terms. A fear appeal, in health promotion, is when health promoters, trying to inspire change in behavior from high risk to lowered risk, place emphasis of a health message on the use of gruesome fear content or try to arouse fear responses in the audience (Witte, 1992). Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. More elaborate strategies, such as training people on the skills they will need to succeed in changing behavior, will likely be more effective in most contexts. Indeed, Nabi and Prestin (2016) conducted experimental research to examine the influence of the structure of news stories that incorporated fear. There is some difference in opinion as to whether fear appeals are productive or counterproductive. For generations of health educators, public health campaigns around health issues emphasized positive messages and highlighted . However, despite anecdotal evidence that physicians communication may trigger fear in patients for the purpose of motivating behavior change or compliance, the intentional use of fear-based messages in the clinical context has not received attention in the academic literature. Further, current understanding of the role of individual differences as well as fears impact in contexts beyond direct persuasive messages, like news, entertainment, patient-provider dynamics, and social media, is likewise limited. Would you like email updates of new search results? Indeed, though meta-analyses support a linear relationship between fear arousal and persuasive outcomes, recent methodologies suggest that shifts in experienced fear across a fear appeal, an inverted-U pattern of fear responses specifically, may also be a valid predictor of the persuasiveness of a fear appeal (Meczkowski, Dillard, & Shen, 2016). Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. An overview of the scholarly work on the emotion of fear, fear appeal theories, and fear as a variable that impacts post-message attitudes and behaviors can provide insights as to what is currently known, as well as what remains to be learned about how fear can be incorporated into persuasive messages and to what effect. While some work suggests age is not a moderator of fear-appeal effects (Witte & Allen, 2000), the role of developmental stages in the processing of and behavioral reactions to fear appeals has yet to be thoroughly or rigorously tested. Are You Sore, Stiff, and Unrested When You Wake Up? Fear appeals work for many public health messages, but not for COVID-1 | The term fear is reserved for referencing the emotion experienced by audiences in response to fear appeal messages. However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. Paul Mongeau also addresses the history and current state of the fear appeal literature in his chapter of the second edition of The Sage Handbook of Persuasion: Developments in Theory and Practice. Keywords: There is also the possibility that arousing fear could result in a defensive response or risk denial; particularly, among those who are most susceptible to the threat (Ruiter, Kessels, Peters, & Kok, 2014). When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . He found that fear appeal manipulations resulted in a moderate relationship with perceived fear (r = .34), attitudes (r = .20), and behavior (r = .17). A researcher searching for literature on fear, fear appeals, or the role of fear in message outcomes will likely find an astounding number books, journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and even essays to examine. Horror movies use sound to frighten audiences. In this article, we discuss the use of fear appeals during the COVID-19 pandemic and the potential negative sociobehavioral outcomes fear-based messaging may have. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.20.0346. From a message-design standpoint, the EPPM suggests that fear-arousing messages should include both threat and efficacy information if they are to persuade audiences to take adaptive actions. Although the predicted interaction between threat and efficacy appraisals lies at the heart of the EPPM, the full model includes 12 propositions detailing numerous intricate relationships between the different types of cognitions, fear, and message effectiveness (Witte, 1992). Using a within-subjects design and asking participants about their fear responses before, during, and after viewing a message about colorectal cancer screening using, Dillard et al. This type of message is conveyed to frighten and arouse people into action by emphasising the serious outcome from not taking action. One trait variable that has been studied for its contribution to fear arousal is trait anxiety, or the dispositional tendency toward experiencing anxiety and worry across situations. Despite the wealth of research on the effects of fear-based messages, numerous limitations have been pointed out in the existing literature. It holds that a fear appeal argument initiates a cognitive assessment process that considers the severity of the threatened event, the probability of the occurrence of the event, and the efficacy of a recommended behavior response. Indeed, with developmental stages in mind, there is reason to believe that different message structures would be more appropriate for different age groups. Such messages are most effective when they provide compelling arguments for the likelihood of negative outcomes if a certain advocated measure is not adopted, and when the arguments make a strong case that adopting the measure will . Changes in Mental Health, Emotional Distress, and Substance Use Affecting Women Experiencing Violence and Their Service Providers during COVID-19 in a U.S. Southern State. A second more general approach to considering the influence of discrete emotions, including fear, on persuasive outcome is the emotions-as-frames perspective, which argues that an audience members emotional state provides a lens through which individuals pay attention to and process message information (Nabi, 2003). The use of fear appeals to discourage adolescents from engaging in risky health behaviors, such as smoking and drug use, is well-documented and unsurprising, given that adolescents are often assumed to perceive themselves as less vulnerable to risk. The EFM then predicts that once an emotion is experienced, emotion-consistent information will be made accessible from memory. Indeed, the more intense the emotional experience or the greater the emotional disruption, the more likely it is to be socially shared and shared repetitively over an extended period of time (Rim, 2009). The fear-as-acquired drive model (often referred to as the drive model) argues that stimuli that evoke fear result in a drive to avoid the unpleasant emotional state (Hovland, Janis, & Kelly, 1953). Fear Arousal and Health and Risk Messaging | Oxford Research Epub 2020 Jun 26. Visit one of the web links below and review the health promotion message. a persuasive message that is designed to alter attitudes by producing fear in the recipient. Fear is the ultimate form of emotional baggage. Although not specifically documented, the pervasiveness and endurance of cautionary tales in childrens literature suggest that such narratives are believed to be influential; and in light of the growing evidence of the persuasive influence of narratives on adults (Green, 2006; Green & Brock, 2000), there is reason to believe such stories do, indeed, have the desired influence on children. Therefore, they can be quite useful to practitioners. Further, the threat coverage was frequently sensationalistic, with more than half of stories referring to pandemic, outbreak, or death in ways disproportionate to the actual threat. However, if the curvilinear hypothesis suggested by the drive model were the best model of fear appeal effects, this value would be negative and significant. Shir-Raz Y, Elisha E, Martin B, Ronel N, Guetzkow J. Minerva. The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour, 11, 207-220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trf.2007.11.001, Ruiter, R. A., Kessels, L. T, E., Peters, G. Y., & Kok, G. (2014). For example, Myrick and Oliver (2015) found that feeling fearful after watching a YouTube public-service announcement about skin cancer was a positive predictor of intentions to share the video with others. Thus, despite the sustained attention that fear-based messages have received in the past, many questions still remain for future research to address. The authors note that scientific studies of fear-based campaigns around the world draw mixed conclusions: some reject the approach; others conclude that "the stronger the fear appeal the better." 180 on Fear. Thus, it may be that fear appeals that emphasize efficacy over threat may be more successful for this demographic, though future research is needed to address this question directly. For example, the core relational theme of fear is imminent threat. At the other end of the age spectrum, there is reason to believe that the elderly may also have unique reactions to fear-evoking messages compared to younger people. Indeed, the Tannenbaum et al. Once evoked, fear manifests itself physically in multiple ways, including changes in facial expressions (e.g., wide-open eyes and raised eyelids) and the body (e.g., increased heart rate) (hman, 2008). As health professionals develop health communication for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), we implore that these communication approaches do not include fear appeals. Further, blunters were significantly more likely to actually obtain a mammogram in response to the more direct messages. Arne hmans chapter on fear and anxiety in the third edition of the Handbook of Emotions provides a helpful overview of the biological and psychological underpinnings of the study of fear and its influence on cognition and behavior. Additionally, social media provide opportunities not only for social sharing but also for information requests from others, which in turn could improve health outcomes. Further, there is evidence that campaigns targeting adolescents risky health behaviors are at high risk for failure due to the likelihood of reactance, or resistance to having behavioral choices controlled by others. For example, fear appeals begin with threat information followed by efficacy information. Two decades later, Howard Leventhals work provides helpful summaries of those who came before as well as his own conceptualization of the parallel process model. There is growing evidence in multiple media contexts, including health messages (e.g., Dunlop, Wakefield, & Kashima, 2010) that the emotionality of media messages, regardless of valence, is associated with their diffusing through social networks. Socioemotional selectivity theory argues that the elderly and the terminally ill are more likely to pay attention to positive information than to negative information (Carstensen, Fung, & Charles, 2003). As the drive model lost favor, researchers began exploring alternative explanations for why stronger fear appeal messages could lead to greater adaptive responses, while still accounting for the evidence that sometimes, fear appeals lead to maladaptive responses. They found fear appeals to be effective, especially when they contained recommendations for one-time only (versus repeated) behaviors and if the targeted audience included a larger percentage of women. The emotional flow perspective suggests that the threat information results in fear arousal, and the efficacy information is associated with feelings of hope. So, if an audience member appraises a message as representing an imminent threat to her own well-being, she will likely experience fear. Given that many health-oriented fear appeals have been shown to evoke multiple emotions, including anger, disgust, and sadness, current theorizing has taken a mixed-emotions or emotional flow perspective to provide a deeper understanding of fear appeal effects. Fear appeals are persuasive messages that emphasize the potential danger and harm that will befall individuals if they do not adopt the messages recommendations. However, these gender differences are likely moderated by gender-role socialization processes such that expressions of fear are typically looked down on for men but not women, resulting in a cycle whereby fearful reactions by women are both tolerated and expected by other members of society (McLean & Anderson, 2009). Understanding the personalities of the audience (e.g., the typical characteristics and traits of women in comparison to men, or of adolescents versus young or middle-aged people, or of those who are health conscious versus those who are not) will help in designing a campaign that is better directed toward the targeted individuals. Fear appeals are also used in educational settings. Repeated exposure could possibly promote complacency among those who see frightening messages but are not directly targeted or do not perceive themselves to be in the target audience. PLoS One. Although fear may predispose audiences to engage in defensive motivations, it also prompts consideration of efficacy potential. Albarracin also recommended against using only fear-based appeals. For example, if the message is so extreme, instead of being influenced by it, the audience could ignore the information altogether. Keywords: Fear appeals, risk, health communication, meta-analysis Fear appeals are persuasive messages that attempt to arouse fear by emphasizing the potential danger and harm that will befall individuals if they do not adopt the messages' recommendations (Dillard, 1996; Maddux & Rogers, 1983).

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