This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. His 1971 theoretical article published in the American Journal of Public Health includes a discussion of previous works dating back to Darwin alongside a discussion of promising ways to persuade people to adopt preventative health behaviors. In essence, the fear depicted in the message is so great that rather than deal with it, people stop listening, viewing, or reading it. Although the distinction between the two has not been studied empirically, and the word anxious is frequently included among the emotion words used to assess fear responses to persuasive appeals, it is useful to recognize that the experience of fear and anxiety are distinguishable, with fear carrying the potential for more adaptive action. How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication - PubMed There is a maximum effective value of fear. 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 because threat perceptions are necessary to elicit fear but efficacy perceptions are necessary to promote protection motivation. Y ou probably still remember public service ads that scared you: The cigarette smoker with throat cancer. fear appeal. PDF Appealing to Fear - American Psychological Association Moreover, they may perceive themselves to be less able to avoid the harms associated with risky health behaviors (Cohn, Macfarlane, Yanez, & Imai, 1995). 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. For the 71 studies in their sample that reported perceived fear, the meta-analysis revealed that treatment groups reported greater perceived fear than comparison groups, d = 1.00. 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). A balance between the two perspectives was struck in the 1990s with the introduction of the extended parallel process model (Witte, 1992) in which the evocation of fear from cognitive appraisals of message content was conceptualized as motivating consideration of both response and self-efficacy, the combination of which was predicted to influence attitudinal and behavioral response. Careers. The contributors demonstrate the necessity of basing message design decisions on appropriate theories of human behavior and communication effectiveness by synthesizing and integrating knowledge and insights from theory and research in communication and health behavior change. One Personality Trait Predicts Longevity More Than OthersBut Why? Indeed, with developmental stages in mind, there is reason to believe that different message structures would be more appropriate for different age groups. government site. Ukraine war latest: Boy, 6, cries as sister killed in Russian attack Fear Appeals | Psychology Today However, this approach offers a limited understanding of the experience of fear throughout message exposure. 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. 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. Yet, little attention has been paid to this issue. Among the "Big Five" personality traits, conscientiousness isespecially predictive of living a longer life. Further, blunters were significantly more likely to actually obtain a mammogram in response to the more direct messages. SSM Popul Health. Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. The emotional flow perspective suggests that the threat information results in fear arousal, and the efficacy information is associated with feelings of hope. Further, of the studies that do measure fear, they tend to do so in very limited ways, typically self-report of emotional arousal in response to the message generally. In an early test of this model, Janis and Feshbach (1953) examined the connection between fear arousal and the persuasiveness of dental-hygiene messages. As the United States faces out-of-control spikes from Covid-19, with people refusing to take recommended, often even mandated, precautions, our public health announcements from governments,. (2015, October 22). The use of fear to motivate behavior change is well-documented across the lifespan. So can . Fear appeals obviously aren't limited to comets. However, fear appeals should not be seen as a panacea because the effect is still small. One emotion that often affects attitudes and behavior is fear. 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. National Library of Medicine As such, monitors and blunters may respond differently to fear appeal messages. 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). The victims of a drunk driver.The guy who neglected his cholesterol lying in a morgue with a toe tag.. With new, highly transmissible variants of SARS-CoV-2 now spreading, some health professionals have started calling for the use of similar fear-based strategies to persuade people to . Although the lions share of research on the persuasive influence of fear focuses on persuasive advertisements, other media messages may be considered as possible conduits of influence via fear arousal. 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. However, if a person focuses on controlling the emotion of fear, fear control processes are engaged, which ultimately result in maladaptive outcomes, such as avoidance, denial, and reactance. Thus, despite the sustained attention that fear-based messages have received in the past, many questions still remain for future research to address. 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. It generally describes a strategy for motivating people to take a particular action. 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). It's Time to Scare People About Covid - The New York Times Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence. Health 366 (know these terms) Flashcards | Quizlet How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. In order to motivate students to perform well academically, teachers and counselors will emphasize the importance of exams, papers, and classroom participation. 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. 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. Politics latest updates: Union leader Pat Cullen says nurses are pushed Solved Fear appeals are often used in public health | Chegg.com The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. The other two perceptions related to the target behavior: the effectiveness of the target behavior for avoiding the threat (response efficacy) and the ability of the individual to enact the target behavior (self-efficacy). Of note, though the terms fear and anxiety are often used interchangeably in everyday language, they each represent unique affective states with, theoretically, different implications in persuasion contexts. 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. This relationship could indicate that individuals who are already in an anxious state of mind when presented with a fear appeal may be more accepting of the message than those who come to a message with less anxiety. 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. Fear-based advertising is a specific type of social marketing that employs scare tactics or other anxiety-producing mechanisms to highlight the dangers of engaging (or not engaging) in a certain practice, like smoking or drunken driving. As with previous models, though EPPM offers an appealing explanation for when fear appeals may be more or less persuasive, research has not supported all of the EPPMs key predictions. Currently, scholars are considering how emotions in addition to fear influence the effect of fear appeals (e.g., emotional flow) and possible moderators of fear appeal effects. Insincere behavior may be saying or doing what an individual believes others want to hear or to gain favor to reap future rewards. 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. Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. Hubenschmid L, Helmreich I, Kber G, Gilan D, Frenzel SB, van Dick R, Lieb K. Front Public Health. Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. More specifically, the EPPM argues that if a message contains information on threat severity and susceptibility, fear will be aroused. The .gov means its official. Such research would, in turn, help determine what message structures would be best suited for which age groups and within what health contexts. found that this dynamic approach offered evidence in support of a curvilinear relationship between fear and persuasion. These topics have generated great interest from scholars in multiple fields, ranging from communication and media studies to psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and beyond. 2023 Jan 21;21:101343. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2023.101343. In such situations, they might also criticize the nature of the message and then use self-justification for not modifying their attitudes and behavior; especially, if they discuss the fear appeals with others (Goldenbeld, Twisk, & Houwing, 2007). Indeed, the Tannenbaum et al. 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. Clearly, fear appeals do not only provoke fear reactions. (2015) calculated an average weighted effect size comparing groups exposed to moderate fear versus those exposed to high depicted fear. National Center for Biotechnology Information 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. Hovland, Janis, and Kelly noted that habituated behaviors can be adaptive in that they target the threat itself and aim to reduce or eliminate it. 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. In their experiment, participants who saw the most graphic and frightening images of tooth decay and poor oral hygiene rated the material as the most worrisome and interesting compared to those in other conditions who saw less disturbing images or just heard a lecture about cavities. In short, message consumers emotional states frame how they respond to the rest of the message, which in turn results in emotion-consistent decision-making and action. Which can you control and which can you not? There has been sporadic attention in the literature to the individual differences that may determine the types of audiences who will be more or less persuaded by a fear appeal. She noted that the studies analyzed did not necessarily compare people who were afraid to people who were unafraid, but instead compared groups that were exposed to more or less fear-inducing content. How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication May Be In addition to fear appeals that purposefully aim to scare audiences to motivate attitude and behavior change, recent work suggests that fear can be generated by other forms of messages (e.g., news accounts, social media posts, interpersonal conversations) that may influence receivers approaches to health issues. Fear Appeals | Psychology Today UK fear appeal has been used when the message producer intended to inform the public about the severe consequences that unhealthy behavior or a disease may induce, thus expressing a causal . 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. Visit one of the web links below and review the health promotion message. 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. Print 2020 Jun 30. 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. Although no new models of fear appeals have specifically been advanced since the EPPM, theorists have considered how a range of emotions, including fear, might generate persuasive effect. Fear-arousal appeals might be effective for a person with little or no schooling. Presenting a fear appeal more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting anything or presenting a low-fear appeal, said Albarracin. The link was not copied. While meta-analyses support the claim that on the aggregate, fear-based messages are persuasive, researchers are still working to explain why fear appeals work and for whom they work best and under what conditions. American Psychological Association. So, if an audience member appraises a message as representing an imminent threat to her own well-being, she will likely experience fear. Our thoughts and feelings aren't the problem. Maslows so-called "hierarchy of needs"is often presented as a five-level pyramid where the bottom four levels are "deficiency needs.". 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). People cope with potentially threatening information in different ways. For example, in a study of fear appeals about condom use and AIDS prevention, Witte and Morrison (2000) found that whereas trait anxiety was not related to threat perceptions, efficacy perceptions, or behavior, participants low in trait anxiety reported greater defensive avoidance than did those high in trait anxiety. Moreover, research also suggests that fear may motivate social sharing of messages, which can in turn allow for more widespread influence of fear-based messages. I believe that most current approaches to anxiety fall short because they are predicated on the medical model, which views anxiety as an illness. 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. For example, the core relational theme of fear is imminent threat. 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). This is because present-oriented goals are more important than future-oriented, protection-related goals when one perceives her timeline to be limited. Additionally, researchers have investigated the effects of fear in other message contexts, from news media to user-generated digital content. An official website of the United States government. 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. 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). Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics. Although these are presented in chronological order here, it is important to note that the evolution of fear appeal theorizing reflects a combination of attempts to build on previous theory alongside overarching changes in psychological research that shifted from motivation-based approaches to more cognitively oriented approaches starting in the 1970s (for a review, see Nabi, 2007). There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . Accessibility 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. Recent research, however, is beginning to more carefully consider how the emotions associated with health messages promote information-sharing behaviors. However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. 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. This journal article, as well as other journal articles, can be found in scholarly databases available via most university libraries. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging. For example, if the message is so extreme, instead of being influenced by it, the audience could ignore the information altogether. More important, said Albarracin, there was no evidence in the meta-analysis that fear appeals backfired to produce a worse outcome relative to a control group. 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 . Still, there is no data indicating that audiences will be worse off from receiving fear appeals in any condition.. PLoS One. 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). (2015) meta-analysis did not examine the relationship between the amount of fear aroused and fear-appeal effects on persuasive outcomes. Thus, the influence of the emotional arousal versus its related cognitions is often blurred. Although these meta-analyses seem to converge on a small but significant relationship between fear and persuasion-related outcomes, the mechanisms of fear appeal effects are still not entirely clear. 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. Dolores Albarracin can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 224-7019. Communication, collaboration and cooperation can stop the 2019 coronavirus. 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. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 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. We will refer to this as depicted fear to There can be feelings of disgust, anger, anxiety, or guilt. When a growing body of empirical evidence found a positive linear relationship between fear and persuasion (that is, the more frightened participants were, the more persuasive the message, generally speaking), the drive model no longer seemed a plausible explanation for why fear appeals affect audiences (Beck & Frankel, 1981; Giesen & Hendrick, 1974; Mewborn & Rogers, 1979). The meta-analysis did not, however, directly address interactions between the threat and efficacy elements. 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). 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. Before This paper provides an insight into the use of fear appeals to communicate a public health message. Fear appeals are a form of persuasive communication. Given that fear appeals are designed to evoke powerful emotional responses, it is reasonable to surmise that such messages may be the source of social sharing, both through interpersonal discussion and social media posting or commenting. Example: thetruth.com. International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6370. These emotions may also have an effect on behavioral changes. In addition, understanding how fear-based messages fit within the general context of other emotion-based messagesor how fear works with other emotions within the same messageis somewhat uncharted territory. Fear-based appeals effective at changing attitudes, behaviors after all Thus, as research on fear appeals moves forward, it is important to give greater consideration not only to how such messages are processed in situ but also how those messages are shared and discussed within social networks, both interpersonally and online. A fear appeal is a means of persuasion that threatens the audience with a negative, physical . 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. With a smaller set of studies (between 17 and 33), the authors also analyzed the relationship between fear appeal manipulations in the message content and cognitions. Fear Appeals | Psychology Today More research examining the influence of fear-based health news storieswith particular focus on the structure of such news stories and audience expectations, or schema, about the type of content in different types of messagesis necessary. Schweinhart A, Arambur C, Bauer R, Simons-Rudolph A, Atwood K, Luseno WK. Fear appeal is a term used in psychology, sociology and marketing. 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. 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). 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. How can we better frame COVID-19 public health messages? 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. (PDF) How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health - ResearchGate 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. A perceived threat has two subcomponents (a) perceived . Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. 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. Fear appeal - Wikipedia Given personality traits influence perceptions of events, and given emotions are based on such perceptions, personality traits could influence whether or not a fear appeal is likely to evoke fear, to what degree, and toward what end. Conclusion: Fear Appeals and Message Effects. More than 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions are yearly dispensed in the US, yet little is known about the experiences of those taking them. Longitudinal work on fear appeal exposure and responses, as well as research on the influence of more prevalent use of fear appeals versus other message strategies, could help confirm or dismiss these possibilities. However, the resources listed below are helpful places to start exploring these topics as they are addressed in the academic literature. That is, adolescents may not perceive themselves to be less vulnerable to risk as much as they actually perceive a range of health-threatening behaviors as less risky than they actually are, compared to their adult counterparts. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging
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