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. 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. National Center for Biotechnology Information Accessibility Another individual difference that may influence reactions to fear appeals is monitoring versus blunting responses to information (S. M. Miller, 1987). Keywords: Fear appeals, risk, health communication, meta-analysis Fear appeals are persuasive messages that attempt to arouse fear by emphasizing the potential danger and harm that will befall individuals if they do not adopt the messages' recommendations (Dillard, 1996; Maddux & Rogers, 1983). We will refer to this as depicted fear to American Psychological Association. PostedSeptember 18, 2018 If fear appeal messages are defined or identified based primarily on their ability to elicit fear, message design elements and message response become conflated, which interferes with gaining insight into the message components responsible for generating the desired fear response (OKeefe, 2003). However, this assumes news stories are processed as fear appeals, which is as yet an open question. Under this model, any behavior that effectively alleviates fear will then become automatically associated with relief from the aversive state, and that behavior will become a habitual response to threatening stimuli. Warnings about the unwanted consequences of smoking, texting while driving, and drinking while pregnant can be considered fear appeals. 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). An official website of the United States government. A student interested in the historical roots of fear appeal theorizing could start with seminal pieces from Carl Hovlands Yale research group, including the 1953 book by Hovland, Janis, and Kelly titled Communication and Persuasion: Psychological Studies of Opinion Change, as well as later journal articles reporting empirical data related to fear appeals. 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). 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. 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). Bookshelf One trait variable that has been studied for its contribution to fear arousal is trait anxiety, or the dispositional tendency toward experiencing anxiety and worry across situations. Health 366 (know these terms) Flashcards | Quizlet The following study examines social facilitation of eating cues in anti-obesity fear appeals to determine . 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). Online ahead of print. 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. Fear appeal - Wikipedia 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 . 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). sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal Fear is a negatively valenced discrete emotional state that is an inherent part of the human experience. 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. 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. The protection motivation theory is an attitude-based model. The CFM predicts that because fears action tendency motivates individuals to avoid threatening situations, message-related fear should predispose audiences to want to avoid giving further attention to the message. Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. Evidence from a meta-analysis of fear appeals found that appeals targeting female-dominated audiences are more effective than those targeting male audiences, likely because women tend to be more prevention focused in that they are more sensitive to avoiding negative outcomes than to seeking positive outcomes (Tannenbaum et al., 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. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features! The discussion establishes that fear appeal-based public health messages (i.e. Conversely, the frequent use of fear appeals across a range of issues could possibly result in a chronic sense of heightened anxiety. 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. Indeed, though meta-analyses support a linear relationship between fear arousal and persuasive outcomes, recent methodologies suggest that shifts in experienced fear across a fear appeal, an inverted-U pattern of fear responses specifically, may also be a valid predictor of the persuasiveness of a fear appeal (Meczkowski, Dillard, & Shen, 2016). For example, the core relational theme of fear is imminent threat. 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. 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. However, the prediction that fear, but not anger, would be associated with less careful information processing when expectation of reassurance was high was not supported. Though conceptually appealing, the PPM did not specify when individuals were more likely to rely on fear-control or danger-control processes. 2020 Oct;111:37-38. doi: 10.1016/j.pediatrneurol.2020.06.015. 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. At a methodological level, many studies of fear appeals fail to measure the emotion of fear itself as an outcome, instead analyzing only threat and efficacy cognitions. Marco Yzer, Brian Southwell, and Michael Stephenson discuss the use of fear in public communication campaigns in their chapter in the fourth edition of Public Communication Campaigns. 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. The emotion of feara negatively valenced response to a threatis an innate experience, and one that likely evolved from mammalian defense systems (hman, 2008). 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. Hovland, Janis, and Kelly noted that habituated behaviors can be adaptive in that they target the threat itself and aim to reduce or eliminate it. Yet fears associated motivation for protection from the threat may still lead to message processing, depending on the audiences expectations regarding the remainder of the message content. PMC A balance between the two perspectives was struck in the 1990s with the introduction of the extended parallel process model (Witte, 1992) in which the evocation of fear from cognitive appraisals of message content was conceptualized as motivating consideration of both response and self-efficacy, the combination of which was predicted to influence attitudinal and behavioral response.
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