Smoking will kill you. Candidate X will destroy the economy. Does that grab your attention? According to a study by a psychology professor at Illinois, fear-based appeals such as these are effective ways of influencing attitudes and behaviors.
“There are very few circumstances under which (fear-based appeals) are not effective and there are no identifiable circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes,” said Dolores Albarracin, who authored a study in the journal Psychological Bulletin after conducting a comprehensive review of over 50 years of research on the topic.
Researchers have long debated the effectiveness of using fear to influence opinions. To help settle the debate, Albarracin and her colleagues looked at 127 research articles representing 248 independent samples and over 27,000 individuals from experiments conducted between 1962 and 2014. They believe it is the most comprehensive meta-analysis on the topic to date.
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).
More important, said Albarracin, there was no evidence in the meta-analysis that fear appeals backfired to produce a worse outcome relative to a control group.
“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. “However, fear appeals should not be seen as a panacea because the effect is still small. Still, there is no data indicating that audiences will be worse off from receiving fear appeals in any condition.”
She noted that the studies analyzed did not necessarily compare people who were afraid to people who were unafraid, but instead compared groups that were exposed to more or less fear-inducing content. Albarracin also recommended against using only fear-based appeals.
“More elaborate strategies, such as training people on the skills they will need to succeed in changing behavior, will likely be more effective in most contexts. It is very important not to lose sight of this,” she said.
