From my research, fear appeal is most effective when used in relation to health care, which is why there is such an abundance of its usage in the recent pandemic. I wanted to dedicate a section of the essay to how fear appeal is used in such cases, and list the benefits/consequences that are proposed by various studies. Below I have two lists, The Positives and Negatives that Fear Appeal has in a Medical Setting
Positives of Fear Appeal in a Medical Setting
-"Threatening health messages are popular in health education design. For example, the introduction of health warnings on cigarette packages in 2002 was accompanied by wide-scale media attention on television, radio and in newspapers throughout Europe. Soon after the introduction of these messages, national polls were presented that suggested that people smoked less because of the new health warnings.” (Ruiter, 2014)
-”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,” (Tannenbaul et al., 2015)
-“stated that anxiety or panic acts as a catalyst for information seeking. On the one hand, for self-protection purposes, panicked citizens are more eager to seek more information about pandemics because the media offers people a good understanding of a pandemic’s prevalence and nature” (Wu et al., 2021)
Negatives of Fear Appeal in a Medical Setting
-"Health messages about threats such as fear appeals are widely used in health communication (Ruiter et al., 2014), and varied threat information will cause different levels of negative emotions such as fear and anxiety” (Wu et al., 2021)
-“Fear appeals, also known as scare tactics, have been widely used to promote recommended preventive behaviors. We contend that unintended negative outcomes can result from fear appeals that intensify the already complex pandemic and efforts to contain it.”
-“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. 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.”
-“COVID-19 has caused the global community enough stress and fear; there is no need to exacerbate these issues by using fear appeals as a health communication strategy.”
(Stolow et al., 2020)
-Panick buying can cause lack of access to PPE Supplies for frontline workers, nurses, and those without access.
"Countries like Singapore (INSEAD, 2020) and Australia (BBC, 2020), among others, have been hit with panic buying and stockpiling of PPEs, food items and general household supplies, despite there being no indication of the impending shortage. Panic buying, in general, increases consumer anxiety about supply shortage and make panic buying even worse (Allon & Bassamboo, 2011). Frontline health workers, critical care nurses, and the vulnerable are particularly at risk of the scarcity of essential items and everyday consumables (BBC, 2020)."
(Addo et al., 2020)
-"In 1953 Janis and Feshbach’s seminal research identified three main types of emotional reactions to anxiety-arousing topics.
1) Inattentiveness – a defensive tendency to avoid thoughts related to the topic.
2) Aggressiveness – a defensive tendency to become aggressive towards the communicator, likely in the form of rejecting the arguments.
3)Defensive avoidances – attempts to ward off exposure to the anxiety causing communication typically in the form of failing to recall the message, losing interest in the topic, denying or minimizing the importance of the threat [30]."
"Janis and Feshbach suggested a negative association between fear producing messages and intended results. They found that a message that induced a minimal amount of fear was more effective than one evoking a high fear response in terms of both positive attitude change and resistance to subsequent attitudinal retrogression [30].” (Simpson, 2017)
Sources:
Newbold, C. (2017, September 14). THE FEAR APPEAL (ADVERTISING). The Visual Communication Guy. Retrieved July 11, 2022, from https://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/2017/09/14/the-fear-appeal-advertising/
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
Worthington, A. K. (2021, May 30). Fear Appeals: The Extended Parallel Process Model – Persuasion Theory in Action: An Open Educational Resource. Pressbooks. Retrieved July 10, 2022, from https://ua.pressbooks.pub/persuasiontheoryinaction/chapter/fear-appeals-the-extended-parallel-process-model/
Claxton, N., Desrichard, O., & Moussaoui, L. S. (2021, July 6). Fear appeals to promote better health behaviors: an investigation of potential mediators. Taylor & Francis Online. Retrieved July 10, 2022, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21642850.2021.1947290
Wu, G., Deng, X. & Liu, B. Using fear appeal theories to understand the effects of location information of patients on citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic. Curr Psychol (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-01953-8
Simpson, J. K. (2017). Appeal to fear in health care: appropriate or inappropriate? Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12998-017-0157-8
Ruiter, R. A. (2014). Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence. International Journal of Psychology, 49(2), 63–70. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12042
Stolow, J. A., Moses, L. M., Lederer, A. M., & Carter, R. (2020). How Fear Appeal Approaches in COVID-19 Health Communication May Be Harming the Global Community. Health Education & Behavior, 47(4), 531–535. https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198120935073
Addo, P. C., Jiaming, F., Kulbo, N. B., & Liangqiang, L. (2020). COVID-19: fear appeal favoring purchase behavior towards personal protective equipment. The Service Industries Journal, 40(7–8), 471–490. https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2020.1751823
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