how is fear appeal used in public health messaging

Thus anxiety is typically a more diffuse emotional experience with a less clearly defined action tendency or behavioral target than fear. 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. a mask. It's the meaning we attach to them and the way we act on behalf of them. 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. Give an example or create your own public health message using the fear appeal. 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). A fear appeal is a means of persuasion that threatens the audience with a negative, physical . More than 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions are yearly dispensed in the US, yet little is known about the experiences of those taking them. 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. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. As such, monitors and blunters may respond differently to fear appeal messages. These topics have generated great interest from scholars in multiple fields, ranging from communication and media studies to psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and beyond. In order to motivate students to perform well academically, teachers and counselors will emphasize the importance of exams, papers, and classroom participation. As such, message components of fear appeals include threat and efficacy. 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. An official website of the United States government. The EFM then predicts that once an emotion is experienced, emotion-consistent information will be made accessible from memory. They can also sometimes be found through online scholarly search engines, such as Google Scholar, PubMed, or the American Psychological Associations PsycNET website. Fear appeal is a typical marketing strategy that aims to affect behavior by inducing anxiety in individuals who are exposed to a frightening message. Thus, the model proved unhelpful for both predicting responses to fear appeals as well as to fear appeal message design. 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. 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. Importantly, Witte and Allen (2000) did not find support for the EPPMs predicted threat by efficacy interaction. 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. 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). Politics latest updates: Union leader Pat Cullen says nurses are pushed These efforts have resulted in a number of theoretical perspectives that still inform modern-day work on the persuasive power of fear and its implications for message design. Fear-arousal appeals might be effective for a person with little or no schooling. Fear appeals to promote better health behaviors: an investigation of Insincere behavior may be saying or doing what an individual believes others want to hear or to gain favor to reap future rewards. Hope this helps A campaign with gruesome photos of a person dying of lung cancer to combat smoking might make people think twice . Book chapters that discuss fears role in communication and media processes and effects also provide helpful overviews of the state of the literature as well as suggestions for future research directions. The use of fear to motivate behavior change is well-documented across the lifespan. 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. This may be because, unlike with public service announcements, audiences do not expect news stories to highlight a significant problem and then offer a clear and effective solution. The site is secure. 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. 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. 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. For example. However, this assumes news stories are processed as fear appeals, which is as yet an open question. 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. 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. Thus, despite the sustained attention that fear-based messages have received in the past, many questions still remain for future research to address. If the linear fear-persuasion hypothesis supported by the Mongeau (1998) and Witte and Allen (2000) meta-analyses, were the superior model of fear appeal effects, this value would be positive and significant. Maslows so-called "hierarchy of needs"is often presented as a five-level pyramid where the bottom four levels are "deficiency needs.". and transmitted securely. 2022 Oct 10;17(10):e0275854. People cope with potentially threatening information in different ways. Bookshelf 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. Fear appeal is a psychological, sociological, and marketing term. In an initial test of the model, the predictions that fear promotes less careful message processing relative to anger and uncertainty of message reassurance results in more careful processing that certainty of reassurance were supported. The discussion establishes that fear appeal-based public health messages (i.e. Fear appeals are a form of persuasive communication. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. 2020 Summer;32(2):221-228. doi: 10.24869/psyd.2020.221. 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. Moreover, research also suggests that fear may motivate social sharing of messages, which can in turn allow for more widespread influence of fear-based messages. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal 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. 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. Mongeaus (1998) meta-analysis examined the influence of fear appeals on perceived fear, attitudes, and behaviors. 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. 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. 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. 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. These included two perceptions related to the potential threat: severity of the threat and susceptibility to it. So, if an audience member appraises a message as representing an imminent threat to her own well-being, she will likely experience fear. 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. 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. 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 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 . Med Anthropol. As such, adaptive outcomes are likely. 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). "These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. How to Stop Your Mind When It Spins Out of Control. government site. Additionally, researchers have investigated the effects of fear in other message contexts, from news media to user-generated digital content. He says there are three ways to look at the local elections. The fear-arousal appeal. Fear Appeals | Psychology Today UK 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. Effects of general and corona-specific stressors on mental burden during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in Germany. 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. Their results indicated that most stories (86%) referenced threat and of these, 94% did so in the first third of the story. How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? Most crucially, and from a practical standpoint, the controlled laboratory settings and forced message exposure used in many fear appeal studies may not translate to real-world settings. As health professionals develop health communication for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), we implore that these communication approaches do not include fear appeals. When people are aware of a threat, the aversive state of fear quickly follows. official website and that any information you provide is encrypted Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable. As this study suggests, more nuanced methodological approaches are needed to better understand how individuals experience fear appeals over the course of message exposure. Fear appeal is a term used in psychology, sociology and marketing. Researchers now believe anxiety disorders and PTSD are whole brain conditions. 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. In his parallel process model (PPM), Leventhal argues that one of two responses to a fear appeal is likely. Since the 1950s, researchers have addressed strategic fear appeal effects, continually refining answers to the questions of when, why, and for whom they are persuasive. eCollection 2022. fear appeal has been used when the message producer intended to inform the public about the severe consequences that unhealthy behavior or a disease may induce, thus expressing a causal . 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. Online ahead of print. 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. Fear messages that let the audience know they can perform the recommended behavior or that the behavior will have a positive result are more effective than fear appeal messages without mention of recommended actions. Thus, as research on fear appeals moves forward, it is important to give greater consideration not only to how such messages are processed in situ but also how those messages are shared and discussed within social networks, both interpersonally and online. 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. 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). 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. Many of us are reluctant to change our perceptions or habits, even though we know we would be happier and healthier. This Perspective discusses the use of fear appeals in promoting health behaviour. 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 . 2020 Jun 22;140(10). Scaring People to Improve Health Works, But Can Have Downsides : Shots 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. The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging Ultimately, only 2.5% of stories included all four components associated with fear appeals. 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. 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. Fear appeals are persuasive messages that emphasize the potential danger and harm that will befall individuals if they do not adopt the messages recommendations. Thus, highlighting both actual risk of health-threatening behavior, especially occasional ones, to enhance perceived severity, as well as boosting self-efficacy to protect oneself from harm, may be particularly important message goals to match the psychological profile of adolescents. Among the "Big Five" personality traits, conscientiousness isespecially predictive of living a longer life. With strong evolutionary roots, fear serves important functions, including alerting people to present threats and motivating action to avoid future threats. Nat Med. 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.

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