This type of message is conveyed to frighten and arouse people into action by emphasising the serious outcome from not taking action. 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. On the other hand, proponents argue that fear appeals positively affect attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, with one meta-analysis reporting an average effect size of d = 0.29 (Tannenbaum et al., 2015 ). 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. 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). 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. 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. 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. 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 alone does not change behavior. Participants read news stories designed to evoke either fear or hope about the human papilloma virus (HPV) and with different levels of response efficacy information regarding the impending HPV vaccine. These included two perceptions related to the potential threat: severity of the threat and susceptibility to it. More from Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D. Major life events can have significant consequences, yet the gnawing of persistent minor irritations may be more prevalent and harmful. The fear-as-acquired drive model (often referred to as the drive model) argues that stimuli that evoke fear result in a drive to avoid the unpleasant emotional state (Hovland, Janis, & Kelly, 1953). 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. Fear appeals motivate attitude, intention, and behaviour changesespecially fear appeals accompanied by high-efficacy messages. 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. PostedSeptember 18, 2018 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. HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help As health professionals develop health communication for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), we implore that these communication approaches do not include fear appeals. We contend that unintended negative outcomes can result from fear appeals that intensify the already complex pandemic and efforts to contain it. 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. Many of us are reluctant to change our perceptions or habits, even though we know we would be happier and healthier. 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. Although fear may predispose audiences to engage in defensive motivations, it also prompts consideration of efficacy potential. SSM Popul Health. 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. Before Would you like email updates of new search results? So can . Fear, information and control during a pandemic. 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. Fear appeals are often used in public health service announcements and health behavior change campaigns. Thus, the influence of the emotional arousal versus its related cognitions is often blurred. 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. Fear appeals that recommend one-time behaviors are more effective than appeals that recommend repeated behaviors. It generally describes a strategy for motivating people to take a particular action. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies Presenting a fear appeal more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting anything or presenting a low-fear appeal, said Albarracin. 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. The meta-analysis did not, however, directly address interactions between the threat and efficacy elements. Fear Appeals in Health Promotions: An Analysis of - Studentshare Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence. The authors note that scientific studies of fear-based campaigns around the world draw mixed conclusions: some reject the approach; others conclude that "the stronger the fear appeal the better." 180 on Fear. Recent research, however, is beginning to more carefully consider how the emotions associated with health messages promote information-sharing behaviors. 2020 Feb;26(2):151. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0775-x. 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. (PDF) How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health - ResearchGate Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. In light of the limitations of previous theorizing, and coinciding with an increased interest in affect and emotion in the psychology literature (Lazarus, 1991), Witte (1992) proposed the extended parallel process model (EPPM). They looked at 127 research articles representing 248 independent samples and over 27,000 individuals from experiments conducted between 1962 and 2014. 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. Get the help you need from a therapist near youa FREE service from Psychology Today. 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). 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. I believe that most current approaches to anxiety fall short because they are predicated on the medical model, which views anxiety as an illness. An official website of the United States government. Fear Appeals | Psychology Today UK PLoS One. Two decades later, Howard Leventhals work provides helpful summaries of those who came before as well as his own conceptualization of the parallel process model.