What is it about?
Fear appeal messages have been used in persuasion for decades. This study demonstrated that moderately arousing fear-inducing messages to reduce risky driving were more effective than high- or low-arousing messages. This effect appeared to go through affective attitudes. Specifically, when messages are highly arousing, participants describe risky driving as more fun and exciting, which makes them more likely to say they will drive recklessly in the future.
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Why is it important?
Being able to more effectively communicate the need to drive safely is critically important for reducing young driver crashes.
Perspectives
Highly intense fear-appeal messages are not as effective as moderately-intense messages. This is a somewhat controversial finding, because there are theories that predict this finding, and other theories that predict that more intensity is always better. My work shows that there is a point at which greater fear is not effective.
Dr. Nancy Rhodes
Michigan State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Fear-Appeal Messages: Message Processing and Affective Attitudes, Communication Research, January 2015, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0093650214565916.
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