Care, however, should be taken not to stigmatize or exhibit bias regarding the audience; doing so could possibly backfire. National Library of Medicine Effects are most apparent in women and for one-time behaviors, says study. Accessibility International Journal of Psychology, 49, 6370. For generations of health educators, public health campaigns around health issues emphasized positive messages and highlighted . 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. Get the help you need from a therapist near youa FREE service from Psychology Today. The authors note that scientific studies of fear-based campaigns around the world draw mixed conclusions: some reject the approach; others conclude that "the stronger the fear appeal the better." 180 on Fear. 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. Disclaimer. Hubenschmid L, Helmreich I, Kber G, Gilan D, Frenzel SB, van Dick R, Lieb K. Front Public Health. 2020 Feb;26(2):151. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0775-x. sharing sensitive information, make sure youre on a federal 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). Discover the world's . Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 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. 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. Since the 1950s, social scientists have studied the potential effects of fear-arousing messages on audiences. They looked at 127 research articles representing 248 independent samples and over 27,000 individuals from experiments conducted between 1962 and 2014. We contend that unintended negative outcomes can result from fear appeals that intensify the already complex pandemic and efforts to contain it. 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. "These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. 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. 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. He says there are three ways to look at the local elections. Repeated exposure could possibly promote complacency among those who see frightening messages but are not directly targeted or do not perceive themselves to be in the target audience. Moreover, Richard Lazaruss discussion of fear in his 1991 book Emotion and Adaptation offers a useful overview of the emotion from the perspective of cognitive appraisal theory and social psychology more generally. Among the "Big Five" personality traits, conscientiousness isespecially predictive of living a longer life. Bookshelf PLoS One. 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). Example: thetruth.com. The emotion of feara negatively valenced response to a threatis an innate experience, and one that likely evolved from mammalian defense systems (hman, 2008). A researcher searching for literature on fear, fear appeals, or the role of fear in message outcomes will likely find an astounding number books, journal articles, encyclopedia entries, and even essays to examine. Another individual difference that may influence reactions to fear appeals is monitoring versus blunting responses to information (S. M. Miller, 1987). a mask. More research examining the influence of fear-based health news storieswith particular focus on the structure of such news stories and audience expectations, or schema, about the type of content in different types of messagesis necessary. They found positive relationships with severity (r = .44), susceptibility (r = .30), response efficacy (r = .36), and self-efficacy (r = .36). As such, the emotional flow perspective suggests that the emotional shift from fear to hope may help to explain the conditions under which fear appeals are more likely to be effective. Bethesda, MD 20894, Web Policies 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). Nat Med. It further asserts that the ordering or shifts in emotional states in response to changing message content may be critical to understanding persuasive outcomes. In essence, different types of audiences with different predispositions are likely to respond differently to fear appeals. Censorship and Suppression of Covid-19 Heterodoxy: Tactics and Counter-Tactics. However, if efficacy appraisals are strong enough to dominate threat appraisals, the EPPM predicts that individuals will feel capable of addressing the threat and will then enact adaptive, danger-control behaviors. Although not specifically documented, the pervasiveness and endurance of cautionary tales in childrens literature suggest that such narratives are believed to be influential; and in light of the growing evidence of the persuasive influence of narratives on adults (Green, 2006; Green & Brock, 2000), there is reason to believe such stories do, indeed, have the desired influence on children. 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 . Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. 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. 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. 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. Fear appeals are persuasive messages that emphasize the potential danger and harm that will befall individuals if they do not adopt the messages recommendations. Hope this helps All close relationships can elicit strong positive and negative emotions the parties have of one another. Further, at a more general level, fear-based messages that alert children to the importance of making self-protective decisions while they are still developing their schemas for health-related behaviors, such as regular teeth brushing or healthy eating, may result in the creation of sustainable habits that eventually result in improved health across the lifespan. Keywords: 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. Psychology Today 2023 Sussex Publishers, LLC. 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. Yet, there is a growing body of literature on the social sharing of emotions that indicates that people have an instinctive need to disclose to others when they experience emotionally charged events, which has been widely documented across cultures, gender, and age groups (Rim, 2009). Thus, the model proved unhelpful for both predicting responses to fear appeals as well as to fear appeal message design. As the field of psychology shifted to emphasize cognition over motivation through the 1960s into the 1970s, the study of fear appeals followed suit, with the theories developed during this timeframe highlighting the cognitions associated with the experience of fear, as well as the link between those cognitions and attitude change. According to the model, people respond to health risk messages through two forms of cognitive apprais als that occur sequentially. 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. People cope with potentially threatening information in different ways. This paper provides an insight into the use of fear appeals to communicate a public health message. Such curvilinear patterns likely result from minimal fear in response to the beginning of a message, stronger fear when an individual sees the threat component of the message, and resolving fear after seeing the efficacy component. Dolores Albarracin can be contacted by email or by phone at (217) 224-7019. 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. There are many messages that convey important information about potential harm; however, if the . 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. 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. Yet, little attention has been paid to this issue. There is a maximum effective value of fear. 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. A review of the gender differences in fear and anxiety, A cognitive-functional model for the effects of discrete negative emotions on information processing, attitude change, and recall, Emotional flow in persuasive health messages, The role of a narratives emotional flow in promoting persuasive outcomes, Unrealistic hope and unnecessary fear: Exploring how sensationalistic news stories influence health behavior motivation, A protection motivation theory of fear appeals and attitude change, Appealing to fear: A meta-analysis of fear appeal effectiveness and theories, Matching health messages to monitor-blunter coping styles to motivate screening mammography, Putting the fear back into fear appeals: The extended parallel process model, A meta-analysis of fear appeals: Implications for effective public health campaigns, Examining the influence of trait anxiety/repressionsensitization on individuals reactions to fear appeals, A conceptualization of threat communications and protective health behavior, Risk-perception: Differences between adolescents and adults, The impact of vulnerability to and severity of a health risk on processing and acceptance of fear-arousing communications: A meta-analysis, Pathways to persuasion: Cognitive and experiential responses to health-promoting mass media messages, Effects of false positive and negative arousal feedback on persuasion, Threat, efficacy, and uncertainty in the first 5 months of national print and electronic news coverage of the H1N1 virus, The emotional effects of news frames on information processing and opinion formation, Fear and anxiety: Animal models and human cognitive psychophysiology, Threat appeals and persuasion: Seeking and finding the elusive curvilinear effect, Effects of threatening and reassuring components of fear appeals on physiological and verbal measures of emotion and attitudes, Narrative conjunctions of caregiver and child: A comparative perspective on socialization through stories, Monitoring and blunting: Validation of a questionnaire to assess styles of information seeking under threat, Laughing and crying: Mixed emotions, compassion, and the effectiveness of a YouTube PSA about skin cancer, Message properties, mediating states, and manipulation checks: Claims, evidence, and data analysis in experimental persuasive message effects research, The extended parallel process model: Illuminating the gaps in research, Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: Theory and empirical review, Fear control and danger control: A test of the extended parallel process model (EPPM), Message-Induced Self-Efficacy and its Role in Health Behavior Change, Worry and Rumination as a Consideration When Designing Health and Risk Messages, Lifespan and Developmental Considerations in Health and Risk Message Design, Using Pictures in Health and Risk Messages, Immersive Virtual Environments, Avatars, and Agents for Health, Spiral of Silence in Health and Risk Messaging, Physiological Measures of Wellness and Message Processing, Embarrassment and Health and Risk Messaging, Simultaneous and Successive Emotion Experiences and Health and Risk Messaging. 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). 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 . The information bombardment on social media is loaded with them. 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. Before With initial exposure to a fear appeal, recipients engage in a threat appraisal. 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. Although these are presented in chronological order here, it is important to note that the evolution of fear appeal theorizing reflects a combination of attempts to build on previous theory alongside overarching changes in psychological research that shifted from motivation-based approaches to more cognitively oriented approaches starting in the 1970s (for a review, see Nabi, 2007). How 'fear appeals' and disinformation may be manipulating the public on COVID Communication by public health officials during a pandemic may involve an organized strategy that includes some. Online ahead of print. However, a moderate amount of fear could be just enough to motivate more adaptive actions to neutralize the threat. More than 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions are yearly dispensed in the US, yet little is known about the experiences of those taking them. As such, careful attention to both the contexts in which fear appeals are most appropriate for adolescent audiences and how such messages are structured is warranted. PMC 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 authors found that though fear was the least common of the emotional responses found, tweets that did exhibit fear were significantly more likely than those that did not to contain a link to outside information and to contain requests for information, as well as interactive health information sharing between users. 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. 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. Therefore, they can be quite useful to practitioners. Indeed, in a systematic review of the EPPM literature, Popova (2012) found that two of Wittes (1992) propositions, (a) when perceived efficacy is at a moderate level, perceived threat will have an inverted-U-shaped effect on message acceptance, and (b) when perceived efficacy is at a high level, there is a reciprocal relationship between perceived threat and fear, have yet to be empirically tested. Given that fear-based messages, which may be perceived as a more manipulative message style, carry a higher likelihood of defensive processing and reactance, fear appeals may be a risky message strategy to use for this age group. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance the creation, communication and application of psychological knowledge to benefit society and improve people's lives. Loners come in many varieties, some of them perectly healthy. 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.

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