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. 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. Fear appeals that recommend one-time behaviors are more effective than appeals that recommend repeated behaviors. 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. Further, many of the 12 propositions originally articulated within the EPPM have not been consistently tested. International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6370. It generally describes a strategy for motivating people to take a particular action. Although little attention has been given to how specific personality traits impact reactions to fear appeals, there are good reasons to believe that they matter and should be looked at more carefully in the future. Careers. For example, if the message is so extreme, instead of being influenced by it, the audience could ignore the information altogether. Since the 1950s, researchers have addressed strategic fear appeal effects, continually refining answers to the questions of when, why, and for whom they are persuasive. 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). 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). 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. Further, blunters were significantly more likely to actually obtain a mammogram in response to the more direct messages. 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. Combining aspects of cognitive-response theories of persuasion with the appraisal-based perspectives on emotion, the CFM focuses on the role of three concepts: motivated attention, motivated processing, and message expectations. They can also sometimes be found through online scholarly search engines, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, or the American Psychological Associations PsycNET website. 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). 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. Jakovljevic M, Jakovljevic I, Bjedov S, Mustac F. Psychiatr Danub. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Thus, it may be that blunters may respond better to shorter, more direct fear appeals whereas monitors may be more willing to engage with longer or more detailed fear-inducing messages. 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. Communication, collaboration and cooperation can stop the 2019 coronavirus. 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. For example, fear appeals begin with threat information followed by efficacy information. In light of findings like these, Janis (1967) later argued that the relationship between the elicitation of fear and adoption of the target behavior would be an inverted U-shaped curve. 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. In discussions of fear appeals and fear appeal effects, it is important to draw the distinction between a message componentsomething inherent to the messagethat may result in a fear response, and the experience of fear itself by the message receiver. Though conceptually appealing, the PPM did not specify when individuals were more likely to rely on fear-control or danger-control processes. To aid health professionals in redirecting away from the use of fear appeals, we offer a phased approach to creating health communication messages during the COVID-19 crisis. Thus, in this context, the emphasis is on how existing fear or anxiety may be minimized by the providers communication style rather than the providers communication being the stimulus for fear. (2015) meta-analysis did not examine the relationship between the amount of fear aroused and fear-appeal effects on persuasive outcomes. 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). Maslows so-called "hierarchy of needs"is often presented as a five-level pyramid where the bottom four levels are "deficiency needs.". Still, there is no data indicating that audiences will be worse off from receiving fear appeals in any condition.. Fear, in turn, motivates protective behavior and a strong desire to escape the threat. We are in the "closing arguments phase" of the local election campaign, deputy political editor Sam Coates says. Insincere behavior may be saying or doing what an individual believes others want to hear or to gain favor to reap future rewards. If fear is used to motivate attitudinal and behavioral change, it should be used judiciously. One Personality Trait Predicts Longevity More Than OthersBut Why? WASHINGTON Fear-based appeals appear to be effective at influencing attitudes and behaviors, especially among women, according to a comprehensive review of over 50 years of research on the topic, published by the American Psychological Association. It was d = .05 with a 95% confidence interval that crossed 0 [.34, 0.24], suggesting that neither the linear nor curvilinear hypotheses were fully supported by the body of existing fear appeal research. 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 behaviors, and consider external factors needed to support the uptake of behaviors. (2015) calculated an average weighted effect size comparing groups exposed to moderate fear versus those exposed to high depicted fear. Psychiatry for Better World: COVID-19 and Blame Games People Play from Public and Global Metal Health Perspective. Bookshelf Fear appeals are more effective for women because women tend to be more prevention-focused than men. However, the conditions under which the emotion of fear and the cognitive perceptions related to threat and efficacy information produce productive persuasive effect remain unclear. For example, we may learn that taking too much over-the-counter pain medication can cause liver damage; nevertheless, we continue to take more than we should when the pain is great. As the field of psychology shifted to emphasize cognition over motivation through the 1960s into the 1970s, the study of fear appeals followed suit, with the theories developed during this timeframe highlighting the cognitions associated with the experience of fear, as well as the link between those cognitions and attitude change. Visually, the EPPM is represented as a path model whereby the four message components in the external stimuli (i.e., self-efficacy, response efficacy, susceptibility, and severity) predict their related cognitive perceptions. WASHINGTON Fear-based appeals appear to be effective at influencing attitudes and behaviors, especially among women, according to a comprehensive review of over 50 years of research on the topic, published by the American Psychological Association. Men have long been silent and stoic about their inner lives, but theres every reason for them to open up emotionallyand their partners are helping. Specifically, the CFM predicts that an individual experiencing message-relevant fear who is also uncertain as to whether the rest of the message will contain reassuring information (i.e., it may help alleviate fear, but full exposure is necessary to know for sure) would be most likely to carefully process the message. However, far more research is needed to confirm this finding and to explore other ways in which monitoring and blunting, and indeed other individual differences, suggest implications for fear-based messaging. 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. Which can you control and which can you not? Two years later, in their meta-analysis of 98 studies, Witte and Allen (2000) likewise found a moderately positive relationship between fear appeals and experienced fear (r = .30). The .gov means its official. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives. (2015, October 22). These include distrust in public health authorities, skepticism of health messaging, a lack of uptake in recommended behaviors, and a plethora of other unintended consequences. Understanding Brain Circuits of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety, A message addressing the harmfulness of driving while drunk may have no effect on those who do not drive or drink, Breast cancer messages are typically directed toward women who have a larger personal risk of bodily harm than men (although men may be impacted by their concern for female loved ones), Public service announcements on the lethal dangers of young people going to college without having received a meningitis vaccination, Billboards indicating the harmfulness of sexually transmitted diseases and promoting safe, Videos of terrible accidents due to texting while driving. Book chapters that discuss fears role in communication and media processes and effects also provide helpful overviews of the state of the literature as well as suggestions for future research directions. 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. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. 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. Recent research, however, is beginning to more carefully consider how the emotions associated with health messages promote information-sharing behaviors. One emotion that often affects attitudes and behavior is fear. 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. Marco Yzer, Brian Southwell, and Michael Stephenson discuss the use of fear in public communication campaigns in their chapter in the fourth edition of Public Communication Campaigns. 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). The EFM then predicts that once an emotion is experienced, emotion-consistent information will be made accessible from memory. For example, Nabi (1999) proposed the cognitive-functional model (CFM) to advance the literature on negative emotional appeals generally, including specific predictions regarding the role of fear in mediated persuasion. Although this approach suggests that patient anxieties may be reduced through the presentation of efficacy-related information, which is consistent with fear-appeal messaging, there are large gaps in this area of research that would benefit from additional attention. That is, the message might not only be rejected by the audience, but the behavior that the message intended to change could become further entrenched. 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. MeSH Fear alone does not change behavior. He found that fear appeal manipulations resulted in a moderate relationship with perceived fear (r = .34), attitudes (r = .20), and behavior (r = .17). This paper provides an insight into the use of fear appeals to communicate a public health message. Fear appeals obviously aren't limited to comets. However, fear appeals should not be seen as a panacea because the effect is still small. 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. Online ahead of print. After decades of research, it is clear that fear can indeed motivate positive health behaviors and that exposure to information about threat susceptibility, severity, response efficacy, and self-efficacy is key to this process. However, the resources listed below are helpful places to start exploring these topics as they are addressed in the academic literature. (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. The emotion of feara negatively valenced response to a threatis an innate experience, and one that likely evolved from mammalian defense systems (hman, 2008). This site needs JavaScript to work properly. The use of fear to motivate behavior change is well-documented across the lifespan. 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 . 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. Tannenbaum et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable. According to the model, people respond to health risk messages through two forms of cognitive apprais als that occur sequentially. Med Anthropol. With strong evolutionary roots, fear serves important functions, including alerting people to present threats and motivating action to avoid future threats. They looked at 127 research articles representing 248 independent samples and over 27,000 individuals from experiments conducted between 1962 and 2014. The discussion establishes that fear appeal-based public health messages (i.e. SSM Popul Health. After decades of research, it is clear that fear can indeed motivate positive health behaviors and that exposure to information about threat susceptibility, severity, response efficacy, and self-efficacy is key to this process. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! Yet, there is a growing body of literature on the social sharing of emotions that indicates that people have an instinctive need to disclose to others when they experience emotionally charged events, which has been widely documented across cultures, gender, and age groups (Rim, 2009). All close relationships can elicit strong positive and negative emotions the parties have of one another. However, there is mixed evidence as to trait anxietys impact on fear appeal effects. PLoS One. Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. This is because present-oriented goals are more important than future-oriented, protection-related goals when one perceives her timeline to be limited. Conversely, the frequent use of fear appeals across a range of issues could possibly result in a chronic sense of heightened anxiety. Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. Fifteen years later, Tannenbaum, Hepler, Zimmerman, Saul, Jacobs, Wilson et al. Most crucially, and from a practical standpoint, the controlled laboratory settings and forced message exposure used in many fear appeal studies may not translate to real-world settings. The site is secure. Keywords: Horror movies use sound to frighten audiences. 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. However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. Conclusion: Fear Appeals and Message Effects. There are very few circumstances under which they are not effective and there are no identifiable circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes, said Dolores Albarracin, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an author of the study, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin. However, this assumes news stories are processed as fear appeals, which is as yet an open question. "One is seats, one is . These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. 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. However, fear appeals should be used cautiously, since they may backfire if target audiences do not believe they are able to effectively avert a threat [ 21] p. 605. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging. National Library of Medicine Effects of persuasive communication and group discussions on acceptability of anti-speeding policies for male and female drivers. Article: Appealing to Fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories, by Melanie Tannenbaum, PhD, Kristina Wilson, PhD, and Dolores Abarracin, PhD, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Justin Hepler, PhD, University of Nevada, Reno; Rick Zimmerman, PhD, University of Missouri, St. Louis; and Lindsey Saul, PhD, and Samantha Jacobs, MPH, Virginia Commonwealth University, Psychological Bulletin, published online Oct. 23, 2015. Discover the world's . There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the message is to have any effect, it should address issues that instill critical amounts of fear and be targeted to those who are the most susceptible to the risk. Epub 2020 Mar 26. On the other hand, proponents argue that fear appeals positively affect attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, with one meta-analysis reporting an average effect size of d = 0.29 (Tannenbaum et al., 2015 ). These included two perceptions related to the potential threat: severity of the threat and susceptibility to it. APA's membership includes more than 122,500 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. How to Stop Your Mind When It Spins Out of Control. How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help Fear produces a significant though small amount of change across the board. This research suggests that exposure to health news storiesfear-generating ones in particularcan influence audience health behaviors, but that the traditional fear appeal structure does not always translate to the news context. As such, it is evident that fear is used to persuade even very young audiences. As such, monitors and blunters may respond differently to fear appeal messages. Motivated attention refers to the degree of approach or avoidance response to the message based on the receivers initial emotional response; motivated processing refers to how motivated the message receiver is to process the message carefully; and message expectations pertain to the audiences degree of certainty that the message will offer reassurance or not. When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. In essence, the fear depicted in the message is so great that rather than deal with it, people stop listening, viewing, or reading it. These behaviors can also, however, be maladaptive if they do not result in behavioral change but instead involve avoiding the topic or becoming defensive toward the message source. a fear appeal message is the amount of fear it is intended to arouse in message recipients. To aid health professionals in redirecting away from the use of fear appeals, we offer a phased approach to creating health communication messages during the COVID-19 crisis. 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). We may learn that certain behaviors we engage in are potentially harmful and have now become fearful; yet, we still engage in the harmful behaviors (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). Dolores Albarracin can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 224-7019. Fear is a negatively valenced discrete emotional state that is an inherent part of the human experience. 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. Results indicated no main effects for fear or hope or response efficacy, but a significant interaction suggested that emotionally consistent presentations (fear and low efficacy, hope and high efficacy) boosted intentions to engage in protective actions relative to emotionally inconsistent, sensationalized presentations (fear and high efficacy, hope and low efficacy). 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). Hubenschmid L, Helmreich I, Kber G, Gilan D, Frenzel SB, van Dick R, Lieb K. Front Public Health. With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. Yet fears associated motivation for protection from the threat may still lead to message processing, depending on the audiences expectations regarding the remainder of the message content. You will explore the application of fear appeals in health promotion messaging through the examination of a health promotion public service announcement or ad campaign. The information bombardment on social media is loaded with them. 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. So can . The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. 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. DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12042, Tannenbaum, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albarracin, D. (2015). Additionally, researchers have investigated the effects of fear in other message contexts, from news media to user-generated digital content. For example. The study of fear-based messages has a long and robust history. If the linear fear-persuasion hypothesis supported by the Mongeau (1998) and Witte and Allen (2000) meta-analyses, were the superior model of fear appeal effects, this value would be positive and significant. Evidence from a meta-analysis of fear appeals found that appeals targeting female-dominated audiences are more effective than those targeting male audiences, likely because women tend to be more prevention focused in that they are more sensitive to avoiding negative outcomes than to seeking positive outcomes (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). 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 appeal. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the 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 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. Coping information 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. As such, each theory or model does not always present a direct response to its immediate predecessor. Thus, it is reasonable to imagine that fear-evoking narrativeswhether in the media or told by parentsare effective vehicles for persuading children, perhaps even more so than didactic fear-based messages. There is a maximum effective value of fear. eCollection 2022. It is very important not to lose sight of this, she said. The term fear is reserved for referencing the emotion experienced by audiences in response to fear appeal messages. 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.
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