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). Clearly, fear appeals do not only provoke fear reactions. As such, monitors and blunters may respond differently to fear appeal messages. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. In such situations, they might also criticize the nature of the message and then use self-justification for not modifying their attitudes and behavior; especially, if they discuss the fear appeals with others (Goldenbeld, Twisk, & Houwing, 2007). 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. Social Facilitation in Fear Appeals Creates Positive Affect but 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. 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. 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. Understanding the personalities of the audience (e.g., the typical characteristics and traits of women in comparison to men, or of adolescents versus young or middle-aged people, or of those who are health conscious versus those who are not) will help in designing a campaign that is better directed toward the targeted individuals. One emotion that often affects attitudes and behavior is fear. Symbols such as dying people, coffins, gravestones or skulls may be used. Albarracin also recommended against using only fear-based appeals. More recently, scholars have adopted a more nuanced approach, noting that messages that include both threat components and efficacy components, and thus are well-categorized as fear appeals, can evoke other emotions in addition to fear and that these other emotions have unique influence on persuasive outcomes. National Center for Biotechnology Information How can peoples attitudes and behavior be changed? As such, message components of fear appeals include threat and efficacy. The use of fear to motivate behavior change is well-documented across the lifespan. and transmitted securely. 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. 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). The .gov means its official. It's Time to Scare People About Covid - The New York Times We are in the "closing arguments phase" of the local election campaign, deputy political editor Sam Coates says. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging Indeed, the Tannenbaum et al. Designing Health Messages: Approaches from Communication Theory and 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). For example, Nabi (1999) proposed the cognitive-functional model (CFM) to advance the literature on negative emotional appeals generally, including specific predictions regarding the role of fear in mediated persuasion. 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). Nat Med. You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Ultimately, only 2.5% of stories included all four components associated with fear appeals. 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). Many studies on the effectiveness of fear appeals have been conducted. 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. 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. 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. Another individual difference that may influence reactions to fear appeals is monitoring versus blunting responses to information (S. M. Miller, 1987). 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. Politics latest updates: Union leader Pat Cullen says nurses are pushed Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 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. Empirical work is needed, however, to test if and how differences between fear and anxiety manifest themselves across multiple persuasion contexts. Med Anthropol. In his parallel process model (PPM), Leventhal argues that one of two responses to a fear appeal is likely. Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D., are psychology professors at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. 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.