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. More than 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions are yearly dispensed in the US, yet little is known about the experiences of those taking them. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. Presenting a fear appeal more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting anything or presenting a low-fear appeal, said Albarracin. Key elements: statement with values and philosophy related to the problem, description of target population to be served, specific services/intervention to be used and why, statement of desired public image Goal -Long-term direction for the program, overall intent or desired outcomes, written in general terms (no specifics) Further, additional perspectives, like the cognitive functional model, ask how messages that evoke emotions other than fear might influence persuasive outcome, with growing attention to the role of specific emotions, such as guilt, anger, and hope. One Personality Trait Predicts Longevity More Than OthersBut Why? Despite the wealth of research on the effects of fear-based messages, numerous limitations have been pointed out in the existing literature. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. fear appeal. Thus, despite the sustained attention that fear-based messages have received in the past, many questions still remain for future research to address. Give an example or create your own public health message using the fear appeal. They can also sometimes be found through online scholarly search engines, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, or the American Psychological Associations PsycNET website. 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. They found positive relationships with severity (r = .44), susceptibility (r = .30), response efficacy (r = .36), and self-efficacy (r = .36). MeSH Fear appeal is a psychological, sociological, and marketing term. Thus, the influence of the emotional arousal versus its related cognitions is often blurred. 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. Thus, the model proved unhelpful for both predicting responses to fear appeals as well as to fear appeal message design. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). How 'fear appeals' and disinformation may be manipulating the public on Schweinhart A, Arambur C, Bauer R, Simons-Rudolph A, Atwood K, Luseno WK. 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). It presents a risk, presents the vulnerability to the risk, and then may, or may not suggest a form of protective action. 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, 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. We contend that unintended negative outcomes can result from fear appeals that intensify the already complex pandemic and efforts to contain it. 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. 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. Empirical work is needed, however, to test if and how differences between fear and anxiety manifest themselves across multiple persuasion contexts. 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 . By the 1990s, Kim Wittes extended parallel process model (EPPM) gained traction, and her 1992 piece in the journal Communication Monographs that first proposes the model is a good place to start understanding this perspective. 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. 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. Solved Fear appeals are often used in public health | Chegg.com Still, meta-analyses across a range of fear- appeal studies have helped clarify the direction and magnitude of fears influence on persuasive outcomes and associated cognitions. Fear. As this study suggests, more nuanced methodological approaches are needed to better understand how individuals experience fear appeals over the course of message exposure. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging APA Dictionary of Psychology 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). 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. As such, adaptive outcomes are likely. As such, message components of fear appeals include threat and efficacy. Fear appeal is a term used in psychology, sociology and marketing. Fear-based appeals effective at changing attitudes, behaviors after all 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. As OKeefe (2003) argues, it is important to differentiate between message features and message effects, and if researchers are to gain a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind fear appeal effects and the specific role that the emotion of fear plays in this process, they need to clearly distinguish not only message features from their psychological effects but also emotional responses from cognitive ones. 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). A fear appeal is a means of persuasion that threatens the audience with a negative, physical . 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. Once a moderate amount of fear is conveyed, there is no further benefit in adding more fear. The following study examines social facilitation of eating cues in anti-obesity fear appeals to determine . Epub 2020 Mar 26. Generally, the findings reveal that fear appeals do work; however, more specific results were also discovered (Tannenbaum et al, 2015). Get the help you need from a therapist near youa FREE service from Psychology Today. 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. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. Tannenbaum et al. Politics latest updates: Union leader Pat Cullen says nurses are pushed Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. 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. Multiple book chapters also provide nice overviews of the existing research on the emotion of fear. 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. Goldenbeld, C., Twisk, D., & Houwing, S. (2008). The emotional flow perspective suggests that the threat information results in fear arousal, and the efficacy information is associated with feelings of hope. Exerting effort may be preferred to doing nothing at all. 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. 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. 8.2.2 Types of appeals in health communication - Open University 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. It's the meaning we attach to them and the way we act on behalf of them. Clearly, fear appeals do not only provoke fear reactions. Under this model, any behavior that effectively alleviates fear will then become automatically associated with relief from the aversive state, and that behavior will become a habitual response to threatening stimuli. In Public Health's Response to Covid, Fear Tactics Are a Misstep Effects of persuasive communication and group discussions on acceptability of anti-speeding policies for male and female drivers. 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. 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. 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. Fifteen years later, Tannenbaum, Hepler, Zimmerman, Saul, Jacobs, Wilson et al. In an early test of this model, Janis and Feshbach (1953) examined the connection between fear arousal and the persuasiveness of dental-hygiene messages. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted It's Time to Scare People About Covid - The New York Times Nat Med. Additionally, they found that the fear aroused by messages that included a message-based fear or threat manipulation was associated with attitudes (r = .15), intentions (r = .13), and behavior change (r = .16). An official website of the United States government. eCollection 2022. People cope with potentially threatening information in different ways. 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. 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). Jakovljevic M, Jakovljevic I, Bjedov S, Mustac F. Psychiatr Danub. Rather, news stories frequently highlight new health threats for which there are no clear solutions yet, leaving the audience to come up with their own ideas on how to best protect themselves. Maslows so-called "hierarchy of needs"is often presented as a five-level pyramid where the bottom four levels are "deficiency needs.". 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. Fear appeals, also known as scare tactics, have been widely used to promote recommended preventive behaviors. 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. Med Anthropol. All close relationships can elicit strong positive and negative emotions the parties have of one another. There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. Copy this link, or click below to email it to a friend. 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. However, some evidence suggests a more nuanced picture. This body of work suggests that, in general, women report being afraid of more items or events and having more severe fear reactions to frightening items or events than men. a persuasive message that is designed to alter attitudes by producing fear in the recipient. 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. 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. 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. 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 . Hope this helps The term fear is reserved for referencing the emotion experienced by audiences in response to fear appeal messages. 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. (PDF) How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health - ResearchGate However, this approach offers a limited understanding of the experience of fear throughout message exposure. Though the four cognitions identified in the PMT proved important to persuasive outcomes in response to fear appeals, the specific relationships among them as asserted by the theory were not fully supported by empirical evidence. As a universally relatable experience, fear is frequently incorporated into the design of messages related to health and risk that aim to motivate people to change their behaviors. Further, many of the 12 propositions originally articulated within the EPPM have not been consistently tested. 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. 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). Fear appeals motivate attitude, intention, and behaviour changesespecially fear appeals accompanied by high-efficacy messages. 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 . Discover the world's . 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. Online ahead of print. 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). One critique of the general study of fear-based persuasive appeals is that such research is typically studied in the lab rather than in real-world contexts in which message exposure and processing are not controlled and discussion of those messages with friends and family is possible. Conversely, the frequent use of fear appeals across a range of issues could possibly result in a chronic sense of heightened anxiety. APA's membership includes more than 122,500 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Fear appeals to promote better health behaviors: an investigation of 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. Pediatr Neurol. However, more recent theorizing has returned to a focus on the influence that the emotion of fear itself has on attitude and behavior change. The study of fear-based messages has a long and robust history. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the Many of us are reluctant to change our perceptions or habits, even though we know we would be happier and healthier. For instance, there is little work to confirm that people actually stay attuned to an entire fear appeal encountered in their daily lives or change the channel to avoid the unpleasant information (Witte & Allen, 2000). The study of fear-based messages has a long and robust history. 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). 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. Additionally, researchers have investigated the effects of fear in other message contexts, from news media to user-generated digital content. When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. 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. How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? 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. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0275854. 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). Many studies on the effectiveness of fear appeals have been conducted. 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). Further, blunters were significantly more likely to actually obtain a mammogram in response to the more direct messages. 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. It's frequently used in public health campaigns such as anti-smoking, anti-drunk driving, and hypertension awareness campaigns. The .gov means its official. In his parallel process model (PPM), Leventhal argues that one of two responses to a fear appeal is likely. This paper provides an insight into the use of fear appeals to communicate a public health message. It is to this literature we now turn. Fear Arousal and Health and Risk Messaging | Oxford Research 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. 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. The link was not copied. | For example. "These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication May Be Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. Shir-Raz Y, Elisha E, Martin B, Ronel N, Guetzkow J. Minerva. 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. The practice of fear appeals has its warranted critics; especially, if applied unethically. Unable to load your collection due to an error, Unable to load your delegates due to an error. If fear appeal messages are defined or identified based primarily on their ability to elicit fear, message design elements and message response become conflated, which interferes with gaining insight into the message components responsible for generating the desired fear response (OKeefe, 2003). Still, there is no data indicating that audiences will be worse off from receiving fear appeals in any condition.. Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D., are psychology professors at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. 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. 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. 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. Keywords: Despite accumulating evidence that fear appeals could be persuasive, the field remained without a good explanation for the mechanisms of these message effects.