PostedSeptember 18, 2018 Once a moderate amount of fear is conveyed, there is no further benefit in adding more fear. 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. 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. Many studies on the effectiveness of fear appeals have been conducted. 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). As such, each theory or model does not always present a direct response to its immediate predecessor. 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. Research has continued to rely heavily on the EPPM, and a special issue of the journal Health Communication in 2013 highlighted the contributions of this model to research over the past two decades. If a person focuses on managing the threat they perceive in the environment, Leventhal argues that danger-control processes are engaged to manage the threat. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. 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. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. Thus, the model proved unhelpful for both predicting responses to fear appeals as well as to fear appeal message design. These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. 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). 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. With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. a fear appeal message is the amount of fear it is intended to arouse in message recipients. 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. 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. Cognitively, fear is associated with uncertainty over the likely outcome and ones ability to cope with the current threat, which contributes to the motivation for avoidance and protection (Lazarus, 1991). Some recent studies have examined the structure of health news in ways that speak to the link between emotional arousal, most notably fear, and persuasive outcomes. 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). 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. However, this approach offers a limited understanding of the experience of fear throughout message exposure. 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. There is a maximum effective value of fear. Print 2020 Jun 30. (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. This may be because, unlike with public service announcements, audiences do not expect news stories to highlight a significant problem and then offer a clear and effective solution. Med Anthropol. Answer: Fear appeal is simply a message (most commonly found in advertising) which is intended to bring fear to its audience; They either encourage or discourage their audience from participating in a specific behavior. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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). 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,. Fear is the ultimate form of emotional baggage. Effects of general and corona-specific stressors on mental burden during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Germany. (2015, October 22). Insincere behavior may be saying or doing what an individual believes others want to hear or to gain favor to reap future rewards. Monitors, however, responded to both message types similarly. Which can you control and which can you not? Would you like email updates of new search results? A fear appeal, then, can be defined as a message that intends to evoke fear in audiences by demonstrating the existence of a threat and then detailing ways to avoid that threat (Witte, 1994). Register for the early bird rate. 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. As such, adaptive outcomes are likely. Hope this helps 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). 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. 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. 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. 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. Health persuasion through emoji: How emoji interacted with information source to predict health behaviors in COVID-19 situation. As such, fear is an emotion that frequently attracts the attention of scholars and message designers who hope to persuade audiences to change their behavior in light of potential threats to well-being and public safety. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. These topics have generated great interest from scholars in multiple fields, ranging from communication and media studies to psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and beyond. The study of fear-based messages has a long and robust history. Careers. The message is conveyed clearly that if students want to achieve their goals (e.g., getting a good job; gaining entry into college, or graduate/medical/law school), they cannot risk poor or sometimes even average grades. Horror movies use sound to frighten audiences. 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). 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. Individuals base their first appraisal on assessment of Moreover, Richard Lazaruss discussion of fear in his 1991 book Emotion and Adaptation offers a useful overview of the emotion from the perspective of cognitive appraisal theory and social psychology more generally. 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. 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. 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). 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. 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. Presenting a fear appeal more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting anything or presenting a low-fear appeal, said Albarracin. Preparing for your first therapy session beforehand can help manage anxiety. Epub 2020 Mar 26. They also confirmed prior findings that fear appeals are effective when they describe how to avoid the threat (e.g., get the vaccine, use a condom). sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Importantly, Witte and Allen (2000) did not find support for the EPPMs predicted threat by efficacy interaction. 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). For instance, Myrick, Holton, Himelboim, and Love (2016) content analyzed tweets about cancer that included the hashtag #stupidcancer, which is particularly popular with young-adult members of the online cancer community. Clearly, fear appeals do not only provoke fear reactions. Despite multiple theoretical perspectives advanced in the literature, no single model decisively captures the conditions of fear appeal effectiveness. Whereas fear is typically the result of an imminent and identifiable threat, anxiety stems from anticipating a potential threat, sometimes of unclear origin (hman, 2008). 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. 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. SSM Popul Health. doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.20.0346. PMC Effects are most apparent in women and for one-time behaviors, says study. Psychological Bulletin, 141, 11781204. Further, individual differences have been considered to determine who is most likely to experience fear during and after message consumption. To help settle the debate, Albarracin and her colleagues conducted what they believe to be the most comprehensive meta-analysis to date. 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). Empirical research, however, did not readily support the predicted curvilinear relationship between fear arousal and influence. 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. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! 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. The practice of fear appeals has its warranted critics; especially, if applied unethically. 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. For example, the core relational theme of fear is imminent threat. Symbols such as dying people, coffins, gravestones or skulls may be used. International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6370. These included two perceptions related to the potential threat: severity of the threat and susceptibility to it. 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. Shir-Raz Y, Elisha E, Martin B, Ronel N, Guetzkow J. Minerva. However, some evidence suggests a more nuanced picture. Indeed, with developmental stages in mind, there is reason to believe that different message structures would be more appropriate for different age groups. Since the 1950s, social scientists have studied the potential effects of fear-arousing messages on audiences. Researchers now believe anxiety disorders and PTSD are whole brain conditions. 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 .
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