Fear Appeals: If You Don't Read This Blog Gypsies Will Kidnap You...

(Early Favorite For a 2009 Darwin Award?)


My final post is going to be about fear appeals in anti-drug advertisements, public service announcements, whatever those things are called. “Truth” television spots target cigarettes while “Above the Influence” is an anti-marijuana campaign. Both campaigns use fear appeals to try to persuade people to avoid cigarettes or drugs.
Appealing to a person’s fear of the negative consequences of a certain action can be an effective way of persuading him/her to avoid that behavior. There are, however, four problems of fear appeals that must be avoided. One, fear appeals must not induce too much fear. The distinction: OK—An above the influence ad says, “If you smoke weed, you will get lazy and fat.” Not OK—An above the influence ad says, “If you smoke weed, your entire family will inexplicably die of swine flu.” That’s a little too much fear. Two, fear appeals must increase the target’s perceived vulnerability. If a target doesn’t feel vulnerable to the negative consequences that the fear appeal is warning against, there is no motivation for behavior change. Three, fear appeals must provide a clear path to prevention, also called response efficacy. With truth and above the influence the path is pretty simple and clearly laid out, stop smoking. Finally, fear appeals must suggest easy enactment of prevention behavior, also called self-efficacy. People are less likely to engage in prevention behavior if it seems very difficult to do so.
One example of a fear appeal in a truth commercial is the song “You Don’t Always Die From Tobacco”. It is sung by a man who has had a tracheotomy and uses a hand-held device to stimulate his vocal chords and speak. He is singing in the middle of a busy New York City street in front of a sizable audience He sings, “You don’t always die from tobacco, sometimes you just lose a lung, oh you don’t always die from tobacco, sometimes they just snip out your tongue, and you won’t sing worth a heck, with a big hole in your neck, no you don’t always die from tobacco.” The lyrics present one aspect of the fear appeal. It mentions three specific consequences of smoking which serve to heighten a smoker’s perceived vulnerability. Actually seeing the man with a hole in his neck also increases perceived vulnerability because he is an in-the-flesh example of what can happen if you don’t engage in prevention behavior. The path to prevention is clear and the prevention behavior is easy, simply stop smoking. The truth campaign effectively utilizes fear appeals to combat deadly diseases that result from smoking cigarettes.

Link:
"You Don't Always Die From Tobacco" commercial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRHvZazd4IM