However, some evidence suggests a more nuanced picture. | 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. 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. 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). a persuasive message that is designed to alter attitudes by producing fear in the recipient. 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). Arne hmans chapter on fear and anxiety in the third edition of the Handbook of Emotions provides a helpful overview of the biological and psychological underpinnings of the study of fear and its influence on cognition and behavior. (2015, October 22). Conclusion: Fear Appeals and Message Effects. Despite accumulating evidence that fear appeals could be persuasive, the field remained without a good explanation for the mechanisms of these message effects. 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). 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. 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. In order to motivate students to perform well academically, teachers and counselors will emphasize the importance of exams, papers, and classroom participation. 2022 Nov 1:1-27. doi: 10.1007/s11024-022-09479-4. Albarracin also recommended against using only fear-based appeals. 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. 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. 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. 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. Simply frightening people without giving them an effective way to avoid or deal with the situation is not a very influential means for behavioral motivation. HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help 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). 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. 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. Maslows so-called "hierarchy of needs"is often presented as a five-level pyramid where the bottom four levels are "deficiency needs.". 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. 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. Fear appeals are often used in public health service announcements and health behavior change campaigns. 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. 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 ). Careers. 8600 Rockville Pike 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. There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . Visit one of the web links below and review the health promotion message. (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. That is, too little fear or too much fear would push individuals toward maladaptive behaviors that quickly reduce the aversive state, such as problem minimization or source derogation, without offering true protection from the threat. Fear appeals are also used in educational settings. Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories. The term fear is reserved for referencing the emotion experienced by audiences in response to fear appeal messages. This type of message is conveyed to frighten and arouse people into action by emphasising the serious outcome from not taking action. However, there is mixed evidence as to trait anxietys impact on fear appeal effects. 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. 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). There can be feelings of disgust, anger, anxiety, or guilt. Schweinhart A, Arambur C, Bauer R, Simons-Rudolph A, Atwood K, Luseno WK. 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. Further, at a more general level, fear-based messages that alert children to the importance of making self-protective decisions while they are still developing their schemas for health-related behaviors, such as regular teeth brushing or healthy eating, may result in the creation of sustainable habits that eventually result in improved health across the lifespan. It's frequently used in public health campaigns such as anti-smoking, anti-drunk driving, and hypertension awareness campaigns. 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. 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. Care, however, should be taken not to stigmatize or exhibit bias regarding the audience; doing so could possibly backfire. Broadly, the EPPM posits that message-relevant fear arises in response to threat appraisals. Substance cues are used in these types of prevention messages in order to gain and keep attention (Clayton et al., 2017a) and potentially inhibit message rejection when a fear appeal is present (Bailey et al., 2018; Sarge and Gong, 2019). The results replicated previous meta-analyses, demonstrating a significant positive relationship between fear appeal manipulations and attitudes, intentions, and behaviors (average weighted d = .29). 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. Researchers now believe anxiety disorders and PTSD are whole brain conditions. In place of focusing solely on the persuasive effects of fear, theorizing since the 1990s has shifted to understanding the role of other emotionswhether evoked by messages designed to produce fear or designed to simply be emotionalon persuasive outcomes. 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). 2020 Summer;32(2):221-228. doi: 10.24869/psyd.2020.221. There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . Reviewed by Lybi Ma. For example, Myrick and Oliver (2015) found that feeling fearful after watching a YouTube public-service announcement about skin cancer was a positive predictor of intentions to share the video with others. Dolores Albarracin can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 224-7019. However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. Indeed, the Tannenbaum et al. There is a maximum effective value of fear. explains the conditions under which fear appeals are likely to succeed. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. Loners come in many varieties, some of them perectly healthy. Exerting effort may be preferred to doing nothing at all. 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. 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. 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. It generally describes a strategy for motivating people to take a particular action. Would you like email updates of new search results? 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. Print 2020 Jun 30. 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. MeSH We will refer to this as depicted fear to 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. However, more recent theorizing has returned to a focus on the influence that the emotion of fear itself has on attitude and behavior change. Beginning with the very young, testing the influence of fear-based messages on children is a difficult area of empirical inquiry given the ethical implications of potential psychological trauma. Online ahead of print. SSM Popul Health. Still, the CFM introduces the notion that the emotion of fear influences how carefully persuasive messages are processed, which in turn has implications for the direction and endurance of persuasive effect. Individuals base their first appraisal on assessment of 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. 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). For example, after viewing fear appeal messages on drinking and driving, some people who drink and drive may respond by claiming that their drinking does not affect their driving skills, and thus the message does not apply to them. Fear and Understanding in the Time of COVID-19. Nat Med. While these types of messages are commonly used in political, public health and commercial advertising campaigns (e.g., smoking will kill you, Candidate A will destroy the economy), their use is controversial as academics continue to debate their effectiveness. 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. It further asserts that the ordering or shifts in emotional states in response to changing message content may be critical to understanding persuasive outcomes. How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? Although the predicted interaction between threat and efficacy appraisals lies at the heart of the EPPM, the full model includes 12 propositions detailing numerous intricate relationships between the different types of cognitions, fear, and message effectiveness (Witte, 1992). 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). 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. Goldenbeld, C., Twisk, D., & Houwing, S. (2008). 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. 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. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. As such, the emotional flow perspective suggests that the emotional shift from fear to hope may help to explain the conditions under which fear appeals are more likely to be effective. Fear appeal is a term used in psychology, sociology and marketing. Once a moderate amount of fear is conveyed, there is no further benefit in adding more fear. The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). 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 . 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. Presenting a fear appeal more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting anything or presenting a low-fear appeal, said Albarracin. 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. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. 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. As such, each theory or model does not always present a direct response to its immediate predecessor. Indeed, in a systematic review of the EPPM literature, Popova (2012) found that two of Wittes (1992) propositions, (a) when perceived efficacy is at a moderate level, perceived threat will have an inverted-U-shaped effect on message acceptance, and (b) when perceived efficacy is at a high level, there is a reciprocal relationship between perceived threat and fear, have yet to be empirically tested. Yet, there is a growing body of literature on the social sharing of emotions that indicates that people have an instinctive need to disclose to others when they experience emotionally charged events, which has been widely documented across cultures, gender, and age groups (Rim, 2009). 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. Which can you control and which can you not? When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. These included two perceptions related to the potential threat: severity of the threat and susceptibility to it. 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, the conditions under which the emotion of fear and the cognitive perceptions related to threat and efficacy information produce productive persuasive effect remain unclear. The third component recommended behavior is important because it gives instruction on what to do to avert or reduce the risk of harm. Pediatr Neurol. 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. However, fear appeals should be used cautiously, since they may backfire if target audiences do not believe they are able to effectively avert a threat [ 21] p. 605. doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.20.0346. 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,. Still, there is no data indicating that audiences will be worse off from receiving fear appeals in any condition.. 2020 Jun 22;140(10). Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. Indeed, with developmental stages in mind, there is reason to believe that different message structures would be more appropriate for different age groups. With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. 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. 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 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). Such research would, in turn, help determine what message structures would be best suited for which age groups and within what health contexts. It also provides a nice overview of the fear appeal theories that came before it (i.e., the drive model, the parallel process model, and protection motivation theory). International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6370. These behaviors can also, however, be maladaptive if they do not result in behavioral change but instead involve avoiding the topic or becoming defensive toward the message source. found that this dynamic approach offered evidence in support of a curvilinear relationship between fear and persuasion. The COVID-19 Pandemic: Making Sense of Rumor and Fear. Preparing for your first therapy session beforehand can help manage anxiety. A fear appeal is a means of persuasion that threatens the audience with a negative, physical . Hope this helps 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.
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