Skip to main content

Fear Appeal - APA Article

"Fear-Based Appeals Effective at Changing Attitudes, Behaviors After All"

This article summarizes a meta-analysis on Fear-Appeal effectiveness. This study looked at 127 research articles on this theory totalling over 27,000 people in 1,962 experiments.

"They found fear appeals to be effective, especially when they contained recommendations for one-time only (versus repeated) behaviors and if the targeted audience included a larger percentage of women. They also confirmed prior findings that fear appeals are effective when they describe how to avoid the threat (e.g., get the vaccine, use a condom)."

-"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."

-“These appeals are effective at changing attitudes, intentions and behaviors. There are very few circumstances under which they are not effective and there are no identifiable circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes,” said Dolores Albarracin, PhD,

-“Fear produces a significant though small amount of change across the board. Presenting a fear appeal more than doubles the probability of change relative to not presenting anything or presenting a low-fear appeal,” said Albarracin.

Fear-Based Appeals Effective at Changing Attitudes, Behaviors After All. (2015). APA. Retrieved July Fear-Based Appeals Effective at Changing Attitudes, Behaviors After All. (2015b). APA. Retrieved July 15, 2022, from https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2015/10/fear-based-appeals#:~:text=Fear%20appeals%20are%20persuasive%20messages,not%20adopt%20the%20messages’%20recommendations.

This article was directly based directly off of the study "Appealing to Fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories". I will be referencing this citation in my essay as both contain the exact same content and originate from the same authors. 

Tannenbaul, M. B., Hepler, J., Zimmerman, R. S., Saul, L., Jacobs, S., Wilson, K., & Albarracin, D. (2015). Appealing to Fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories. Psychological Bulletin, 141(6), 1178–1204. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0039729

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Britannica Media Dependency Theory

What I Found: Britannica Lists a summarized and easy to understand definition of how Media Dependency Works and how the spine of the framework functions. Its is basically a relationship in which the fulfillment of a party's needs is reliant on the resources that media provides. A sort of dependency relationship that an audience has with modes of media. Basic Definition: Media dependency theory , a systematic approach to the study of the effects of mass media on audiences and of the interactions between media, audiences, and social systems. It was introduced in outline by the American communications researchers Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur in 1976. "Two of the basic propositions put forward by Ball-Rokeach and DeFleur are: (1) the greater the number of social functions performed for an audience by a medium (e.g., informing the electorate, providing entertainment), the greater the audience’s dependency on that medium, and (2) the greater the instability of a society (e...
Post a Comment
Read more

Study- Media use is heightened during democratic transition

I was researching past studies that supported my second bullet, in that social issues are the second benefactor in media dependency. This study by Matthew loveless found that an individual's media use is both heightened and follow the media closely in a time of political change. By surveying media use of  citizens from Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria; a media dependency can be seen by those seeking information on their transitioning into a democratic government. It shows that political change in these individuals' countries leads to a reliance on media for consolation.  Matthew Loveless. (2008, February). Media Dependency: Mass Media as Sources of Information in the Democratizing Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (No. 162–183). ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510340701770030
Post a Comment
Read more

Assignment B Claim

For Assignment B, I've decided on the hypothesis that cable news networks use fear-inducing stories to gain more media attraction, but at the cost of their viewer's mental health; especially in women above the age of 30. I worked this into the claim below: Claim :  "Women above the age of 30 have increased mental stress when watching cable news due to its fear-inducing segments. " Media Dependency theory is used by media outlets as a tool to attract and keep high viewership. A key element of Media Dependency theory surrounds the idea that feeling like you are in a state of crisis leads a person to be more reliant on mass media for information.  Prototype :  I am still ideating the prototype I will use however I do know that I will be measuring Fear in this experiment, which I would need to somehow obtain from viewers of cable news.  In addition, I would need to figure out which cable news channels to choose from. I am considering just looking up who has the highest v...
Post a Comment
Read more