The role of fear in persuasion

Abstract

Previous research on fear/threat appeals has correlated fear intensity with persuasion. However, fear might influence persuasion in at least four conceptually distinct ways: (a) the proclivity to experience fear, (b) the rise from baseline to peak, (c) peak intensity, and (d) the decline from peak to postmessage fear. A study was conducted in which 361 participants read a message that first described the dangers of influenza, then advocated obtaining a free vaccination. Significant positive correlations were observed between tonic, that is, traitlike, activation of the behavioral-inhibition system (BIS) and various indices of fear arousal. Nonsignificant correlations were observed between the behavioral-activation system (BAS) and the same indices. Both rise and peak measures of fear predicted persuasion, but decline in fear had no discernible impact on persuasion.

Fear, threat and efficacy in threat appeals: Message involvement as a key mediator to message acceptance

“…The majority of published studies has reported a positive, monotonic fear-persuasion relationship (e.g., Dillard and Anderson, 2004;King and Reid, 1990;LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997;Thornton et al, 2000). One of the reasons for the lack of a theoretically assumed negative effect of 'too high' fear levels in empirical studies may be that a 'fear overdose' may rarely be triggered by a threat appeal ad (LaTour, 2006).…”

“…According to this theory, people deny their fear of death and attempt to enhance their positive self-esteem by means of speeding, as a way of managing this fear. However, nearly all formal tests of drive models have led to their rejection (e.g., Dillard and Anderson, 2004;King and Reid, 1990;LaTour and Rotfeld, 1997;Witte, 1992).…”

Understanding the Interactive Effects of Emotional Appeal and Claim Strength in Health Messages

“…A great deal of research has shown that emotional messages (Dillard & Nabi, 2006;Peters, Lipkus, & Diefenbach, 2006), negative messages (Dillard & Anderson, 2004), and arousing messages (Keller & Block, 1995;Stephenson, 2003) are more effective than nonemotional messages. These well-established findings are completely in line with predictions made by the LC4MP which predicts that emotional messages will be more attention getting, more involving, and better remembered because the presence of emotional content results in the automatic activation of the appropriate motivational system which, in turn, automatically increases the resources allocated to encoding and storing the message (Lang, 2006a;Lang, Dhillon, & Dong, 1995).…”

Scare' Em or Disgust 'Em: The Effects of Graphic Health Promotion Messages

“…The first three items indexed fear content (Dillard & Anderson, 2004; Cronbach's a = .985); the latter three items indexed disgust content (Nabi, 2002; Cronbach's a = .960). Participants were instructed to focus on rating the content, not on rating how they felt.…”

“…Normally, fear-based events are considered negative and are associated with specific consequences such as the onset of disease (Stephenson & Witte, 2001). For fear appeals to be successful, they should also contain material effective at enhancing both response and self-efficacy (Dillard & Anderson, 2004;Witte, 1992).…”