If fear is used to motivate attitudinal and behavioral change, it should be used judiciously. How can we better frame COVID-19 public health messages? 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. Would you like email updates of new search results? 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). Fifteen years later, Tannenbaum, Hepler, Zimmerman, Saul, Jacobs, Wilson et al. 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. Bookshelf The use of fear to motivate behavior change is well-documented across the lifespan. 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. They found positive relationships with severity (r = .44), susceptibility (r = .30), response efficacy (r = .36), and self-efficacy (r = .36). We may learn that certain behaviors we engage in are potentially harmful and have now become fearful; yet, we still engage in the harmful behaviors (Tannenbaum et al., 2015). HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help However, this assumes news stories are processed as fear appeals, which is as yet an open question. The discussion establishes that fear appeal-based public health messages (i.e. (PDF) How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health - ResearchGate In Public Health's Response to Covid, Fear Tactics Are a Misstep 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. In order to motivate students to perform well academically, teachers and counselors will emphasize the importance of exams, papers, and classroom participation. 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). 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. PostedSeptember 18, 2018 For example, the core relational theme of fear is imminent threat. Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, Communication. PDF Appealing to Fear - American Psychological Association 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. 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 ). 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). (2015) calculated an average weighted effect size comparing groups exposed to moderate fear versus those exposed to high depicted fear. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 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). It presents a risk, presents the vulnerability to the risk, and then may, or may not suggest a form of protective action. 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. Fear appeals are persuasive messages that emphasize the potential danger and harm that will befall individuals if they do not adopt the messages recommendations. 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). Fear, information and control during a pandemic. 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. 2020 Summer;32(2):221-228. doi: 10.24869/psyd.2020.221. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Discover the world's . However, these gender differences are likely moderated by gender-role socialization processes such that expressions of fear are typically looked down on for men but not women, resulting in a cycle whereby fearful reactions by women are both tolerated and expected by other members of society (McLean & Anderson, 2009). (2015) meta-analysis did not examine the relationship between the amount of fear aroused and fear-appeal effects on persuasive outcomes. He says there are three ways to look at the local elections. As with previous models, though EPPM offers an appealing explanation for when fear appeals may be more or less persuasive, research has not supported all of the EPPMs key predictions. fear appeal. Fear appeal is a typical marketing strategy that aims to affect behavior by inducing anxiety in individuals who are exposed to a frightening message. The results replicated previous meta-analyses, demonstrating a significant positive relationship between fear appeal manipulations and attitudes, intentions, and behaviors (average weighted d = .29). 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). 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. Social Facilitation in Fear Appeals Creates Positive Affect but 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. Fear appeal - Wikipedia 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). Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. 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. Solved Fear appeals are often used in public health | Chegg.com Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics. Example: thetruth.com. Y ou probably still remember public service ads that scared you: The cigarette smoker with throat cancer. Further, many of the 12 propositions originally articulated within the EPPM have not been consistently tested. 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. 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. 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. Men have long been silent and stoic about their inner lives, but theres every reason for them to open up emotionallyand their partners are helping. For generations of health educators, public health campaigns around health issues emphasized positive messages and highlighted . 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). 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. Appeal to fear in health care: appropriate or inappropriate? Despite accumulating evidence that fear appeals could be persuasive, the field remained without a good explanation for the mechanisms of these message effects. 2020 Jul;39(5):376-379. doi: 10.1080/01459740.2020.1745481. Fear Appeals | Psychology Today 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. Effects of persuasive communication and group discussions on acceptability of anti-speeding policies for male and female drivers. crisis communication; emergency; global health; health communications; risk. 2020 Jun 22;140(10). It is to this literature we now turn. DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12042, Tannenbaum, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albarracin, D. (2015). 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. a mask. Unable to load your collection due to an error, Unable to load your delegates due to an error. How 'fear appeals' and disinformation may be manipulating the public on Understanding Brain Circuits of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety, A message addressing the harmfulness of driving while drunk may have no effect on those who do not drive or drink, Breast cancer messages are typically directed toward women who have a larger personal risk of bodily harm than men (although men may be impacted by their concern for female loved ones), Public service announcements on the lethal dangers of young people going to college without having received a meningitis vaccination, Billboards indicating the harmfulness of sexually transmitted diseases and promoting safe, Videos of terrible accidents due to texting while driving. The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States. The emotional flow perspective suggests that the threat information results in fear arousal, and the efficacy information is associated with feelings of hope. doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.20.0346. 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. How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication May Be 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. So can . Indeed, the Tannenbaum et al. 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). Health persuasion through emoji: How emoji interacted with information source to predict health behaviors in COVID-19 situation. 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. Yet fear-based messages may also be transmitted interpersonally, particularly in healthcare environments. 2023 Feb 7;20(4):2896. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20042896. It's Time to Scare People About Covid - The New York Times These included two perceptions related to the potential threat: severity of the threat and susceptibility to it. Fear appeals are more effective for women because women tend to be more prevention-focused than men. 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. In an early test of this model, Janis and Feshbach (1953) examined the connection between fear arousal and the persuasiveness of dental-hygiene messages. The emotion of feara negatively valenced response to a threatis an innate experience, and one that likely evolved from mammalian defense systems (hman, 2008). 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. 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. Thus, the model proved unhelpful for both predicting responses to fear appeals as well as to fear appeal message design. Specifically, the CFM predicts that an individual experiencing message-relevant fear who is also uncertain as to whether the rest of the message will contain reassuring information (i.e., it may help alleviate fear, but full exposure is necessary to know for sure) would be most likely to carefully process the message. Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. 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. 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). 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. Careers. From children and adolescents to young adults, middle-aged individuals, and finally the elderly, using diverse samples with wide age ranges or investing in long-term cohort and longitudinal studies may help reveal potential differences in fear-arousal and fear appeal effects across developmental stage. Despite the wealth of research on the effects of fear-based messages, numerous limitations have been pointed out in the existing literature. 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. How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? Visit one of the web links below and review the health promotion message. How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication May Be The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. 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. 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). Fear, in turn, motivates protective behavior and a strong desire to escape the threat. Effects are most apparent in women and for one-time behaviors, says study. 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. Pediatr Neurol. Dolores Albarracin can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 224-7019. 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. Fear appeals work for many public health messages, but not for COVID-1 Moreover, they may perceive themselves to be less able to avoid the harms associated with risky health behaviors (Cohn, Macfarlane, Yanez, & Imai, 1995). There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . PMC As such, it is evident that fear is used to persuade even very young audiences. 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). Epub 2020 Mar 26. 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. When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. 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. As such, careful attention to both the contexts in which fear appeals are most appropriate for adolescent audiences and how such messages are structured is warranted. 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. This type of message is conveyed to frighten and arouse people into action by emphasising the serious outcome from not taking action. Given that fear appeals are designed to evoke powerful emotional responses, it is reasonable to surmise that such messages may be the source of social sharing, both through interpersonal discussion and social media posting or commenting. 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. 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. In essence, the fear depicted in the message is so great that rather than deal with it, people stop listening, viewing, or reading it. FOIA You could not be signed in, please check and try again. 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. This is because present-oriented goals are more important than future-oriented, protection-related goals when one perceives her timeline to be limited. 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. Register for the early bird rate. Further, of the studies that do measure fear, they tend to do so in very limited ways, typically self-report of emotional arousal in response to the message generally. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence. However, this approach offers a limited understanding of the experience of fear throughout message exposure. With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. Schweinhart A, Arambur C, Bauer R, Simons-Rudolph A, Atwood K, Luseno WK.
Explain Legislative And Regulatory Requirements And Their Impacts, Mahjong Solitaire Arkadium, California Title Company Rate Calculator, Is Ben Crawford Related To Michael Crawford, Bandidos Patch Over To Mongols, Articles H