How fear appeals work : motivational biases in the processing of fear-arousing health communications

This dissertation deals with the study of fear appeals, i.e. messages in which people are presented with fear-arousing health information, in order to convince them they should alter unhealthy habits and adopt healthy lifestyles. Fear appeals typically start with the presentation of the negative consequences of a certain behavior, followed by a recommendation in which a solution to the health risk is offered. The majority of empirical studies examining the effects of fear appeals on persuasion has found that more fear leads to more persuasion. Unfortunately, the accumulated empirical evidence in support for the positive effect of fear on persuasion has not provided an answer to one crucial question, which is how this effect comes about. Although over the years, various theoretical accounts have been given of the effects of fear appeals on persuasion (Chapter 1), the empirical evidence has not been particularly supportive of any of these theories. In this dissertation, a stage model of fear appeals is introduced, which is the first model of fear appeals to offer explicit hypotheses with respect to the cognitive processes underlying fear-induced persuasion. The stage model proposes that individuals exposed to a fear appeal have to engage in two types of appraisal, namely (primary) appraisal of the threat outlined in the fear appeal, and (secondary) appraisal of coping strategies available for reducing or eliminating the threat. When an individual s vulnerability to a health risk is emphasized in a fear appeal, defense motivation is proposed to occur, which will have opposite effects on the processing of fear appeals (primary appraisal) and the processing of action recommendations (secondary appraisal). In the primary appraisal process, a negative bias is proposed to occur, involving motivated attempts to minimize the health threat by scrutinizing the arguments rather critically, searching for inconsistencies and logical errors, and generally downgrading the threat. In contrast, a positive bias is proposed to occur in the secondary appraisal process, involving motivated attempts to maximize an action recommendation by evaluating it less critically and generally judging the information as more valid. Thus, the stage model proposes that defense motivation will lead to a positive bias in the processing of the action recommendation, and consequently heighten the motivation to accept a solution to a particular threat, regardless of the quality of the arguments to support this recommendation. Five experimental studies are reported that tested hypotheses derived from the stage model (Chapters 2-4). The studies varied the personal vulnerability to a health threat, the severity of this threat and the quality of the arguments in an action recommendation. The dependent variables included cognitive responses to the health threat (primary appraisal) and to the action recommendation (secondary appraisal), measures of negative affect, and measures of persuasion (attitudes, intentions, actions). The findings provide consistent support for the stage model s assumption that higher levels of vulnerability to a health risk will induce a negative bias in the processing of fear appeals, and a positive bias in the processing of recommendations. These findings reconcile some major inconsistencies that have been observed area of fear-induced persuasion, thus substantially increasing understanding of the persuasion-process.