Once a moderate amount of fear is conveyed, there is no further benefit in adding more fear. As the drive model lost favor, researchers began exploring alternative explanations for why stronger fear appeal messages could lead to greater adaptive responses, while still accounting for the evidence that sometimes, fear appeals lead to maladaptive responses. Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D., are psychology professors at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. As such, each theory or model does not always present a direct response to its immediate predecessor. The information bombardment on social media is loaded with them. 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. Effects of persuasive communication and group discussions on acceptability of anti-speeding policies for male and female drivers. Hope this helps Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and It is to this literature we now turn. 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 . 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. Med Anthropol. 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. Yet fear-based messages may also be transmitted interpersonally, particularly in healthcare environments. From a message-design standpoint, the EPPM suggests that fear-arousing messages should include both threat and efficacy information if they are to persuade audiences to take adaptive actions. Epub 2020 Mar 26. Before A second more general approach to considering the influence of discrete emotions, including fear, on persuasive outcome is the emotions-as-frames perspective, which argues that an audience members emotional state provides a lens through which individuals pay attention to and process message information (Nabi, 2003). 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. 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. We are in the "closing arguments phase" of the local election campaign, deputy political editor Sam Coates says. Monitors, however, responded to both message types similarly. Further, many of the 12 propositions originally articulated within the EPPM have not been consistently tested. 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. 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. 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. 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. Which can you control and which can you not? 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. 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 . How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? Advancing psychology to benefit society and improve lives. 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. 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. The practice of fear appeals has its warranted critics; especially, if applied unethically. 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. Fear and Understanding in the Time of COVID-19. This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Bookshelf 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. 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, information and control during a pandemic. The site is secure. Fear-appeal research has focused almost exclusively on mediated messages. Fear appeal is a term used in psychology, sociology and marketing. The Effects of Fear Appeals and Message Format on - ResearchGate Solved Fear appeals are often used in public health | Chegg.com Moreover, they may perceive themselves to be less able to avoid the harms associated with risky health behaviors (Cohn, Macfarlane, Yanez, & Imai, 1995). According to the model, people respond to health risk messages through two forms of cognitive apprais als that occur sequentially. These topics have generated great interest from scholars in multiple fields, ranging from communication and media studies to psychology, sociology, behavioral economics, and beyond. 2020 Summer;32(2):221-228. doi: 10.24869/psyd.2020.221. 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 . 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. It is very important not to lose sight of this, she said. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging 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). The discussion establishes that fear appeal-based public health messages (i.e. (2015, October 22). Undoubtedly, most of us have been exposed to fear appeal campaigns regarding health issues, politics, and traffic and driving safety. 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 . Politics latest updates: Union leader Pat Cullen says nurses are pushed How 'fear appeals' and disinformation may be manipulating the public on Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable. 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. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. Fear produces a significant though small amount of change across the board. 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. 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. People cope with potentially threatening information in different ways. 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. He says there are three ways to look at the local elections. 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. As such, message components of fear appeals include threat and efficacy. We will refer to this as depicted fear to 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). 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). Care, however, should be taken not to stigmatize or exhibit bias regarding the audience; doing so could possibly backfire. 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). 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). 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. 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. This theoretical perspective also argues that older individuals have better memory for positive information than for negative information, suggesting that the threat component of fear appeals may not be as memorable as the efficacy component for this particular audience. (2015) meta-analysis did not examine the relationship between the amount of fear aroused and fear-appeal effects on persuasive outcomes. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 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. 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. Recent research, however, is beginning to more carefully consider how the emotions associated with health messages promote information-sharing behaviors. Research has continued to rely heavily on the EPPM, and a special issue of the journal Health Communication in 2013 highlighted the contributions of this model to research over the past two decades. 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. National Library of Medicine A fear appeal, in health promotion, is when health promoters, trying to inspire change in behavior from high risk to lowered risk, place emphasis of a health message on the use of gruesome fear content or try to arouse fear responses in the audience (Witte, 1992). 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. Individuals base their first appraisal on assessment of doi: 10.4045/tidsskr.20.0346. 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. 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. 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). The physical experience of fear is generated by an extensive network of fear-related neural structures in the brain, particularly the amygdala (Lang, Davis, & hman, 2000; hman, 2008). How can we better frame COVID-19 public health messages? 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. 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. Of note, though the terms fear and anxiety are often used interchangeably in everyday language, they each represent unique affective states with, theoretically, different implications in persuasion contexts. This is because present-oriented goals are more important than future-oriented, protection-related goals when one perceives her timeline to be limited. 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. 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. 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). a fear appeal message is the amount of fear it is intended to arouse in message recipients. So can . 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). Additionally, researchers have investigated the effects of fear in other message contexts, from news media to user-generated digital content. 2020 Feb;26(2):151. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0775-x. 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. Differing motives in a particular situation shapes reactions and perceptions of the experience. 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). Further, the threat coverage was frequently sensationalistic, with more than half of stories referring to pandemic, outbreak, or death in ways disproportionate to the actual threat. Discover the world's . Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence. Multiple book chapters also provide nice overviews of the existing research on the emotion of fear. Clearly, fear appeals do not only provoke fear reactions. Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. This is a critical because if audiences stop paying attention to a fear appeal after the presentation of the threat, they may miss out on the efficacy information that is critical to a fear-based messages success. The use of fear appeals to discourage adolescents from engaging in risky health behaviors, such as smoking and drug use, is well-documented and unsurprising, given that adolescents are often assumed to perceive themselves as less vulnerable to risk. 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. Fear appeals, also known as scare tactics, have been widely used to promote recommended preventive behaviors. fear appeal. 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. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging Conclusion: Fear Appeals and Message Effects. This type of message is conveyed to frighten and arouse people into action by emphasising the serious outcome from not taking action. 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. Yet, little attention has been paid to this issue. These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. 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. 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. Thus, despite the sustained attention that fear-based messages have received in the past, many questions still remain for future research to address. Based on the literature and existing theory spanning from children to the elderly, we suggest that though fear-based messages may be useful to address health issues across the lifespan, there are unique challenges to consider for each age group. 2023 Feb 7;20(4):2896. doi: 10.3390/ijerph20042896. 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. MeSH Psychological Bulletin, 141, 11781204. Maslows so-called "hierarchy of needs"is often presented as a five-level pyramid where the bottom four levels are "deficiency needs.".
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