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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

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