Lecture 8: Emotions Flashcards
Defining fear appeals
Ruiter et al, 2014
Aim: Persuasive communication to heighten arousal and the threat of future negative outcomes
Assumption: Fear is an unpleasant state that people will respond to with cognitive, affective and behavioral responses (motivation to engage in precaution and self-protecting actions)
Can be visual (graphic) or textual (verbal)
Which behavioral models / theories explain how fear appeals work?
Protection Motivation Theory (PMT; Rogers, 1975)
From emotion to cognition
Focus is on perceived threat (cognition) –not so much fear (emotion)
Extended Parallel Process Model was found
Coping appraisal depends on:
response efficacy: is behavior perceived as effective in reducing health risk?
self-efficacy: how capable one thinks s/he is to perform the desired behavior?
Threat appraisal depends on:
severity: how bad is the impact of a health problem?
vulnerability: how personally vulnerable does one think s/he is?
Extended Parallel Processing Model (EPPM; Witte, 1992)
EPPM incorporates and extends PMT
Danger control:
✓ Adaptive responses: “Take control of the threat”
✓ Is the initial reaction after perceiving threat
✓ Message acceptance following from ‘protection motivation’
✓ Thoughts are dominant (cognitions)
= dealing with the situation/problem
Fear control:
✓ Defensive/maladaptive responses: “Take control of the fear”
✓ Can occur after initial reaction … receiver cannot avoid the threat, but can control and escape the fear
✓ Message avoidance / rejection as result of defensive reactions (emotions)
✓ Emotions are dominant
= dealing with your emotions
(EPPM) Evaluation of the threat
The higher the perceived susceptibility to a serious threat, the higher the motivation to
begin the 2nd appraisal
Low perceived threat:
• No motivation to process the message, people ignore the fear appeal
High perceived threat:
• People become scared, and fear motivates them to take action to reduce fear
• Perceived efficacy of recommendation determines what kind of action
(EPPM) High threat, high coping appraisal:
High threat, high coping appraisal:
• Threatened, and high perceived response and self-efficacy
• Danger control
• Adaptive response: behavior change
(EPPM) High threat, low coping appraisal:
High threat, low coping appraisal:
• Threatened, but low perceived response and/or self-efficacy
• Fear control
• Maladaptive response: denial, defensive, avoidance, message derogation
Fear messages in health (Ruiter et al, 2014)
Fear appeals are popular in message design of health interventions:
✓ Severity is often the most visible component - but also the least effective
✓ Short term effects - but what happens in the long term?
there is evidence for defensive (counter-)reactions:
✓ Fear messages on health can lead to denial of risk, biased processing, less attention to the
message, motivation to avoid the message
✓ Especially among those of risk groups with the highest risk
How to avoid rejection of the (fear) message?
✓ Self-affirmation (focus on important, valuable characteristics: receivers open up more)
✓ Promotion of higher (self-)efficacy
✓ Use of specific action-instructions
✓ Make use of implementation intentions
RATIONALE - Shen (2015): Fear appeals
- Fear appeals can evoke more emotions than just fear: horror, sadness, anger …
- Fear appeals can be counter-productive: biased-processing, reactance …
- Fear appeal use can may have ethical concerns: instigating fear (anxiety), (dis)satisfaction,
RATIONALE - Shen (2015): empathy appeals
- Narrative persuasion can offer a solution!
- “Empathy appeal is one particular type of narrative message” (Shen, 2015; p. 574)
- State empathy can facilitate persuasion (direct effect), and lower reactance (indirect effect)
CONCLUSION – Shen (2015)
• Overall, empathy appeals were equally effective as fear appeals
• Moderators:
✓ Gender: Empathy messages more effective for women than men
✓ Occasional smokers: Fear appeals more effective than empathy appeals
✓ Regular rokers: Empathy appeals more effective than fear appeals;
Smokers resist anti-smoking fear messages
How does humor impact the effectiveness of fear appeals? - Mukherjee & Dube (2012) Conclusion
- Higher levels of fear arousal decrease persuasion if humor is absent, but increase
persuasion when humor is present →
fear increases motivation to process, while humor increases ability to process - Defensive responses in terms of message elaboration and vulnerability to threat
are underlying mediators herein →
reduction in defensive response underlies the effect of humor in fear advertising
Affect (Koch)
Defining affect
✓ The experience of emotion
✓ Thought of as in contrast to cognition
(thinking, knowing, remembering, judging,
problem-solving; comprehension, knowledge,
perception) and conation (how one acts)
