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. 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. A perceived threat has two subcomponents (a) perceived . 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). Witte and Allen (2000), in their meta-analysis, did not find a significant relationship between trait anxiety and post-message attitudes, intentions, or behaviors. A campaign with gruesome photos of a person dying of lung cancer to combat smoking might make people think twice . National Library of Medicine 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). 2020 Oct;111:37-38. doi: 10.1016/j.pediatrneurol.2020.06.015. 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. Shir-Raz Y, Elisha E, Martin B, Ronel N, Guetzkow J. Minerva. 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. eCollection 2022. 8600 Rockville Pike Symbols such as dying people, coffins, gravestones or skulls may be used. 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. Our thoughts and feelings aren't the problem. The protection motivation theory is an attitude-based model. 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. 2022 Nov 1:1-27. doi: 10.1007/s11024-022-09479-4. Conversely, the frequent use of fear appeals across a range of issues could possibly result in a chronic sense of heightened anxiety. Researchers now believe anxiety disorders and PTSD are whole brain conditions. 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. A review of the gender differences in fear and anxiety, A cognitive-functional model for the effects of discrete negative emotions on information processing, attitude change, and recall, Emotional flow in persuasive health messages, The role of a narratives emotional flow in promoting persuasive outcomes, Unrealistic hope and unnecessary fear: Exploring how sensationalistic news stories influence health behavior motivation, A protection motivation theory of fear appeals and attitude change, Appealing to fear: A meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories, Matching health messages to monitor-blunter coping styles to motivate screening mammography, Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model, A meta-analysis of fear appeals: Implications for effective public health campaigns, Examining the influence of trait anxiety/repressionsensitization on individuals reactions to fear appeals, A conceptualization of threat communications and protective health behavior, Risk-perception: Differences between adolescents and adults, The impact of vulnerability to and severity of a health risk on processing and acceptance of fear-arousing communications: A meta-analysis, Pathways to persuasion: Cognitive and experiential responses to health-promoting mass media messages, Effects of false positive and negative arousal feedback on persuasion, Threat, efficacy, and uncertainty in the first 5 months of national print and electronic news coverage of the H1N1 virus, The emotional effects of news frames on information processing and opinion formation, Fear and anxiety: Animal models and human cognitive psychophysiology, Threat appeals and persuasion: Seeking and finding the elusive curvilinear effect, Effects of threatening and reassuring components of fear appeals on physiological and verbal measures of emotion and attitudes, Narrative conjunctions of caregiver and child: A comparative perspective on socialization through stories, Monitoring and blunting: Validation of a questionnaire to assess styles of information seeking under threat, Laughing and crying: Mixed emotions, compassion, and the effectiveness of a YouTube PSA about skin cancer, Message properties, mediating states, and manipulation checks: Claims, evidence, and data analysis in experimental persuasive message effects research, The extended parallel process model: Illuminating the gaps in research, Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review, Fear control and danger control: A test of the extended parallel process model (EPPM), Message-Induced Self-Efficacy and its Role in Health Behavior Change, Worry and Rumination as a Consideration When Designing Health and Risk Messages, Lifespan and Developmental Considerations in Health and Risk Message Design, Using Pictures in Health and Risk Messages, Immersive Virtual Environments, Avatars, and Agents for Health, Spiral of Silence in Health and Risk Messaging, Physiological Measures of Wellness and Message Processing, Embarrassment and Health and Risk Messaging, Simultaneous and Successive Emotion Experiences and Health and Risk Messaging. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. 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 researcher searching for literature on fear, fear appeals, or the role of fear in message outcomes will likely find an astounding number books, journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and even essays to examine. 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. 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. 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). 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. Jakovljevic M, Jakovljevic I, Bjedov S, Mustac F. Psychiatr Danub. 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. Among the "Big Five" personality traits, conscientiousness isespecially predictive of living a longer life. 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. 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. He found that fear appeal manipulations resulted in a moderate relationship with perceived fear (r = .34), attitudes (r = .20), and behavior (r = .17). 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. 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. 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. Thus, it may be that fear appeals that emphasize efficacy over threat may be more successful for this demographic, though future research is needed to address this question directly. For example, 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. Additionally, Tannenbaum et al. SSM Popul Health. PostedSeptember 18, 2018 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). Changes in Mental Health, Emotional Distress, and Substance Use Affecting Women Experiencing Violence and Their Service Providers during COVID-19 in a U.S. Southern State. 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. Register for the early bird rate. 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. Throughout the history of the study of fear appeals, any message that evoked negative emotion would often be categorized as a fear appeal. 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. 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). As this study suggests, more nuanced methodological approaches are needed to better understand how individuals experience fear appeals over the course of message exposure. For generations of health educators, public health campaigns around health issues emphasized positive messages and highlighted . Psychological Bulletin, 141, 11781204. 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. 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 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). Importantly, Witte and Allen (2000) did not find support for the EPPMs predicted threat by efficacy interaction. 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. For example. This is because present-oriented goals are more important than future-oriented, protection-related goals when one perceives her timeline to be limited. 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. They also found that efficacy responses were included in 56% of the stories, but of these, only 23% made statements speaking to the effectiveness of such actions. Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. American Psychological Association. 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. A fear appeal is a means of persuasion that threatens the audience with a negative, physical . 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). It further asserts that the ordering or shifts in emotional states in response to changing message content may be critical to understanding persuasive outcomes. Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. Although it is applied more in the context of news than persuasion, the EFM has the potential to assist in understanding how fear-based messages might generate persuasive influence by emphasizing how emotion-relevant information is more likely to be attended to later in the message and how post-message behaviors are likely to be consistent with emotional motivations. 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. Still, there is no data indicating that audiences will be worse off from receiving fear appeals in any condition.. Int J Environ Res Public Health. Fear can be such a powerful tool that campaigns have been developed focusing on fear appeals. Fear appeals are messages that try to persuade people about the potential harm that may happen to them if they do not accept the messages recommendations (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). Further, many of the 12 propositions originally articulated within the EPPM have not been consistently tested. Fear-appeal research has focused almost exclusively on mediated messages. 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. Given that theories of motivation were losing favor to those that focused on cognition in the field of psychology in the 1970s, it is unsurprising that the next major advance in fear appeal theorizing focused on the cognitive elements associated with fear appeal effectiveness. 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,. 2022 Nov 22;10:991292. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.991292. However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. (2015) also found that studies with messages that included efficacy statements had larger effects (d = .43) than did those that did not include efficacy statements (d = .21), with the outcome being an average weighted effect size encompassing attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 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. eCollection 2023 Mar. 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. 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. Accessibility Despite accumulating evidence that fear appeals could be persuasive, the field remained without a good explanation for the mechanisms of these message effects. However, there is mixed evidence as to trait anxietys impact on fear appeal effects. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. 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. 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. 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). 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. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University, Department of Communication, University of California, Santa Barbara, Gender (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies), Fear As Mental State Versus Message Component, Theories of Fears Influence on Risk Perceptions, Attitudes, and Behavior, Fear Messages and Patient-Provider Communication, Conclusion: Fear Appeals and Message Effects, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.266, Fear responses to threat appeals: Functional form, methodological considerations, and correspondence between static and dynamic data, Protection motivation and self-efficacy: A revised theory of fear appeals and attitude change, Brave men and timid women? Fear, information and control during a pandemic. 2020 Summer;32(2):221-228. doi: 10.24869/psyd.2020.221. 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) 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 . Since the 1950s, social scientists have studied the potential effects of fear-arousing messages on audiences. However, cautionary tales, which tell the stories of people who ignore the dangers of a forbidden act and suffer as a result, have frequently been used to encourage compliant behavior in children (P. J. Miller & Moore, 1989). 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. 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. Rooted in appraisal theories of emotions (e.g., Lazarus, 1991), the EFM argues that when a message contains information that is relevant to an emotions core relational theme, or the essential perception that underlies an emotional experience, that particular emotion is aroused. However, the participants in this high-fear condition were actually less likely than those who saw milder images about tooth decay to improve their brushing and flossing habits in a post-test one week after exposure to the initial fear appeal. This raises the question of how gender-role socialization may influence how men, in particular, respond to fear appeals in terms of experienced fear versus reported fear, and the implications for both message design and application. 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. Tannenbaum et al. 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). Visit one of the web links below and review the health promotion message. This type of message is conveyed to frighten and arouse people into action by emphasising the serious outcome from not taking action. Although little research speaks to this issue, Williams-Piehota, Pizarro, Schneider, Mowad, and Salovey (2005) found that participants classified as blunters responded with less negative affect to mammography messages that were simple and direct versus lengthy and detailed in their presentation of threat and efficacy information. Fear appeals obviously aren't limited to comets. International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6370. 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. Empirical work is needed, however, to test if and how differences between fear and anxiety manifest themselves across multiple persuasion contexts. 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. 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. Unable to load your collection due to an error, Unable to load your delegates due to an error. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the 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. So can . 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. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies He says there are three ways to look at the local elections. However, this assumes news stories are processed as fear appeals, which is as yet an open question. Med Anthropol. MeSH 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. 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. 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. Once evoked, fear manifests itself physically in multiple ways, including changes in facial expressions (e.g., wide-open eyes and raised eyelids) and the body (e.g., increased heart rate) (hman, 2008). Most directly relevant, Goodall, Sabo, Cline, and Egbert (2012) conducted a content analysis of print and electronic news coverage of the H1N1 virus from a fear appeal perspective, looking for the appearance of threat and efficacy information within the news coverage. However, the prediction that fear, but not anger, would be associated with less careful information processing when expectation of reassurance was high was not supported. People cope with potentially threatening information in different ways. The social scientific study of fear in persuasive messages traces back to Carl Hovlands research program in the 1950s, which incorporated the persuasive influence of fear among other questions of attitude change and message design. However, fear appeals should not be seen as a panacea because the effect is still small. 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). They looked at 127 research articles representing 248 independent samples and over 27,000 individuals from experiments conducted between 1962 and 2014. 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. An official website of the United States government. Maddux and Rogers (1983) argued that individuals who were high in both threat and efficacy perceptions would be motivated to protect themselves from the threat at hand and therefore the most likely to engage in adaptive, danger-control behaviors. Using a within-subjects design and asking participants about their fear responses before, during, and after viewing a message about colorectal cancer screening using, Dillard et al. 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). public health messages that emphasise the consequences of failing to engage in a particular health behaviour) have two components (1) perceived threat and (2) perceived efficacy. The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. In essence, the fear depicted in the message is so great that rather than deal with it, people stop listening, viewing, or reading it. 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. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades.

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