social marketing
Discuss the effectiveness of Fear Appeal as an approach for creating effective behavior change.
INTRODUCTION
Fear appeal is a persuasive message that attempts to direct and motivate certain behaviors by focusing on the harmful physical or psychological consequences that can be avoided by complying with message recommendations.
Fear appeals are built upon fear. Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotional state characterized by anticipation of pain or great distress and accompanied by heightened autonomic activity especially involving the nervous system.
Fear evolved as a mechanism to protect humans from life-threatening situations. As such, nothing is more important than survival and the evolutionary primacy of the brain’s fear circuitry. Matter-of-fact, the brain’s fear circuitry is more powerful than the brain’s reasoning faculties. Due to this circuitry, fear is more powerful than reason. Fear can sometimes be evoked easily and absurdly for reasons that live in mankind’s evolutionary past. For example, reacting to a non-existent threat, such as a snake that is really a stick, is not as dangerous as the other way around - failing to respond to the actual threat of a snake. The brain seems to be wired to flinch first and ask questions second. As a consequence, fear can be easily and untruthfully sparked in such a way that is irrational and not subject to reason.
Fear appeal consists of two basic components which are threat and actions.
Threat Component
Threats are the motivating aspect of fear appeal. This involves employing effective scare tactics in order to convince the target audience that a certain negative consequence will occur if certain positive behaviors are not performed or negative behaviors are avoided. The more fear is aroused in the audience; the more likely they will respond or comply with the behavior change message being emphasized.
The message should make the target audience feel vulnerable or susceptible to severe psychological
INTRODUCTION
Fear appeal is a persuasive message that attempts to direct and motivate certain behaviors by focusing on the harmful physical or psychological consequences that can be avoided by complying with message recommendations.
Fear appeals are built upon fear. Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotional state characterized by anticipation of pain or great distress and accompanied by heightened autonomic activity especially involving the nervous system.
Fear evolved as a mechanism to protect humans from life-threatening situations. As such, nothing is more important than survival and the evolutionary primacy of the brain’s fear circuitry. Matter-of-fact, the brain’s fear circuitry is more powerful than the brain’s reasoning faculties. Due to this circuitry, fear is more powerful than reason. Fear can sometimes be evoked easily and absurdly for reasons that live in mankind’s evolutionary past. For example, reacting to a non-existent threat, such as a snake that is really a stick, is not as dangerous as the other way around - failing to respond to the actual threat of a snake. The brain seems to be wired to flinch first and ask questions second. As a consequence, fear can be easily and untruthfully sparked in such a way that is irrational and not subject to reason.
Fear appeal consists of two basic components which are threat and actions.
Threat Component
Threats are the motivating aspect of fear appeal. This involves employing effective scare tactics in order to convince the target audience that a certain negative consequence will occur if certain positive behaviors are not performed or negative behaviors are avoided. The more fear is aroused in the audience; the more likely they will respond or comply with the behavior change message being emphasized.
The message should make the target audience feel vulnerable or susceptible to severe psychological