how is fear appeal used in public health messaging

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. This deeper processing in the face of uncertainty occurs, according to the CFM, because the audience member is trying to find some piece of information that might satisfy the fear-induced goal of protection. Yet, little attention has been paid to this issue. That is, too little fear or too much fear would push individuals toward maladaptive behaviors that quickly reduce the aversive state, such as problem minimization or source derogation, without offering true protection from the threat. 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. Register for the early bird rate. Preparing for your first therapy session beforehand can help manage anxiety. Thus, despite the sustained attention that fear-based messages have received in the past, many questions still remain for future research to address. 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. Thus anxiety is typically a more diffuse emotional experience with a less clearly defined action tendency or behavioral target than fear. Another individual difference that may influence reactions to fear appeals is monitoring versus blunting responses to information (S. M. Miller, 1987). One emotion that often affects attitudes and behavior is fear. This site needs JavaScript to work properly. 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. Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence. 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. Horror movies use sound to frighten audiences. 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). Insincere behavior may be saying or doing what an individual believes others want to hear or to gain favor to reap future rewards. 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). 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. The study of fear-based messages has a long and robust history. There is a maximum effective value of fear. However, far more research is needed to confirm this finding and to explore other ways in which monitoring and blunting, and indeed other individual differences, suggest implications for fear-based messaging. 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. 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. Describe the "fear appeal" and how it's used in public health messaging. 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. Additionally, audiences will be motivated to attend to message information that is consistent with the goals of the aroused emotion (e.g., protection, in the case of fear). For example. However, despite anecdotal evidence that physicians communication may trigger fear in patients for the purpose of motivating behavior change or compliance, the intentional use of fear-based messages in the clinical context has not received attention in the academic literature. 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). A campaign with gruesome photos of a person dying of lung cancer to combat smoking might make people think twice . The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the Undoubtedly, most of us have been exposed to fear appeal campaigns regarding health issues, politics, and traffic and driving safety. Generally, the findings reveal that fear appeals do work; however, more specific results were also discovered (Tannenbaum et al, 2015). 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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. There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . Further, many of the 12 propositions originally articulated within the EPPM have not been consistently tested. 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. Key elements: statement with values and philosophy related to the problem, description of target population to be served, specific services/intervention to be used and why, statement of desired public image Goal -Long-term direction for the program, overall intent or desired outcomes, written in general terms (no specifics) 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. The use of fear in public health campaigns has been controversial for decades. Yet fear-based messages may also be transmitted interpersonally, particularly in healthcare environments. A fear appeal is a means of persuasion that threatens the audience with a negative, physical . 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. 8600 Rockville Pike Coping information Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. He found that fear appeal manipulations resulted in a moderate relationship with perceived fear (r = .34), attitudes (r = .20), and behavior (r = .17). 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. 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 order to fully support or reject tenets the original EPPM, additional research is needed. Visit one of the web links below and review the health promotion message. It presents a risk, presents the vulnerability to the risk, and then may, or may not suggest a form of protective action. The fear-as-acquired drive model (often referred to as the drive model) argues that stimuli that evoke fear result in a drive to avoid the unpleasant emotional state (Hovland, Janis, & Kelly, 1953). 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. As such, each theory or model does not always present a direct response to its immediate predecessor. Loners come in many varieties, some of them perectly healthy. Shoba Sreenivasan, Ph.D., and Linda E. Weinberger, Ph.D., are psychology professors at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. 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. Care, however, should be taken not to stigmatize or exhibit bias regarding the audience; doing so could possibly backfire. 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. 2020 Feb;26(2):151. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0775-x. Which can you control and which can you not? However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. In order to motivate students to perform well academically, teachers and counselors will emphasize the importance of exams, papers, and classroom participation. Monitors, however, responded to both message types similarly. Fear, information and control during a pandemic. Conversely, the frequent use of fear appeals across a range of issues could possibly result in a chronic sense of heightened anxiety. However, some evidence suggests a more nuanced picture. In discussions of fear appeals and fear appeal effects, it is important to draw the distinction between a message componentsomething inherent to the messagethat may result in a fear response, and the experience of fear itself by the message receiver. American Psychological Association. 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). 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. With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. An official website of the United States government. 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 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. HHS Vulnerability Disclosure, Help 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. 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. 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. explains the conditions under which fear appeals are likely to succeed. messages are often used in political, public health, and advertising campaigns in the hopes of reducing risky attitudes, intentions, or behaviors, their use is often a polarizing issue. Online ahead of print. The use of fear to motivate behavior change is well-documented across the lifespan. Rather, news stories frequently highlight new health threats for which there are no clear solutions yet, leaving the audience to come up with their own ideas on how to best protect themselves. PostedSeptember 18, 2018 Dolores Albarracin can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 224-7019. Further, individual differences have been considered to determine who is most likely to experience fear during and after message consumption. Moreover, they may perceive themselves to be less able to avoid the harms associated with risky health behaviors (Cohn, Macfarlane, Yanez, & Imai, 1995). Psychological and behavioral responses to the declaration of COVID-19 as a pandemic: A comparative study of Hong Kong, Singapore, and the U.S. NCI CPTC Antibody Characterization Program. 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. Health persuasion through emoji: How emoji interacted with information source to predict health behaviors in COVID-19 situation. 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. As health professionals develop health communication for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), we implore that these communication approaches do not include fear appeals. 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. 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). While these types of messages are commonly used in political, public health and commercial advertising campaigns (e.g., smoking will kill you, Candidate A will destroy the economy), their use is controversial as academics continue to debate their effectiveness. Finally, given the expectation that emotional experience directs information processing and information accessibility, the EFM predicts that decision-making and action will be heavily influenced by these emotion-driven processes. Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited. 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. 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. The emotion of feara negatively valenced response to a threatis an innate experience, and one that likely evolved from mammalian defense systems (hman, 2008). official website and that any information you provide is encrypted However, this assumes news stories are processed as fear appeals, which is as yet an open question. Differing motives in a particular situation shapes reactions and perceptions of the experience. (2015) calculated an average weighted effect size comparing groups exposed to moderate fear versus those exposed to high depicted fear. Careers. One Personality Trait Predicts Longevity More Than OthersBut Why? Fear appeals have three major components: the message, the audience, and the recommended behavior. However, this approach offers a limited understanding of the experience of fear throughout message exposure. Despite accumulating evidence that fear appeals could be persuasive, the field remained without a good explanation for the mechanisms of these message effects. 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. (2015, October 22). The COVID-19 Pandemic: Making Sense of Rumor and Fear. Such research would, in turn, help determine what message structures would be best suited for which age groups and within what health contexts. 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.
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