Fear appeals are strategies that persuade audiences by emphasizing the harmful consequences of not following a recommendation. Research shows that moderate levels of fear appeals are most effective, and that both the emotional and cognitive responses of audiences influence persuasive effectiveness. The level of threat and efficacy will determine how the audience responds, and it’s important to balance these two factors for successful persuasion.
Fear appeals persuade by emphasizing the harmful consequences of not following the recommendations in a message, and have been the subject of study by persuasion strategy researchers since the early 1950s. In an early study, Janis noted a persuasive effect of fear appeals that had not been addressed in previous research. He conducted an experiment in which he presented three different levels of fear appeals to audiences and found that moderate fear appeals had the greatest persuasive effect. This suggests that high levels of fear can overwhelm the receiver and cause them to ignore the message, while low levels of fear can weaken persuasion.
Levendahl, who pioneered the study of fear arousal, criticized Janis’s work for focusing on the emotional side of human behavior, arguing that the effect of fear arousal is not only related to the emotional response of the receiver, but also to the cognitive response. He called the emotional response the “fear control response” and the cognitive response the “risk control response. When the latter is triggered, the recipient will follow the recommendations of the fear globule, but when the former is triggered, the recipient will try to ignore the danger contained in the fear globule in order to control the emotion of fear induced by the fear globule. This is an important contribution to understanding the complex mechanisms of the fear cue.
Synthesizing these previous studies, Witty first identified threat and efficacy as the two factors that determine the persuasive effectiveness of fear appeals. A fear statement has a high level of threat if the recipient perceives that the danger contained in the fear statement is something he or she can experience and that the degree of danger is high. A fear statement has a high level of threat if the recipient believes that fulfilling the recommendations in the fear statement will prevent his or her risk and that he or she has the ability to fulfill the recommendations. A club once told its members, “You must attend meetings. If you don’t, you will lose your membership. Losing your membership is a high threat to someone who has a strong attachment to the group. And when he feels it’s not difficult to attend meetings, the exhortation in the notice gives him a high level of efficacy.
Witty relates these two factors to Levendahl’s two control responses and draws the following conclusions When both threat and efficacy are high, the risk control response is triggered, and when threat is high but efficacy is low, the fear control response is triggered. However, when the level of threat is low, the receiver feels that the threat has no effect on him or her, and there is no response to the fear apparatus, regardless of the level of efficacy. This conclusion was an important stepping stone for further research because it unified theories of fear appeals.
In addition, recent studies have further analyzed the limitations and possibilities of fearfulness as a persuasive strategy. For example, the long-term effects of fear appeals are still being debated. While they can be effective in the short term, it’s possible that over time, audiences may develop a tolerance to fear or become desensitized to repeated scare tactics. Therefore, when utilizing fear tactics, the frequency and intensity of the message and the audience’s response should be carefully considered.
In conclusion, fear tactics can be a powerful tool to increase the effectiveness of persuasive messages, but to maximize their impact, they require a sophisticated strategy that takes into account both the emotional and cognitive responses of the audience. Balancing threat and efficacy, and controlling the frequency and intensity of messages are key to a successful scare tactic.
