Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories

By Melanie B. Tannenbaum, Justin Hepler, Rick S. Zimmerman, Lindsey Saul, Samantha Jacobs, Kristina Wilson, Dolores Albarracin. Psychological bulletin, 2015

1,054 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Fear appeals are a polarizing issue, with proponents confident in their efficacy and opponents confident that they backfire. We present the results of a comprehensive meta-analysis investigating fear appeals’ effectiveness for influencing attitudes, intentions, and behaviors. We tested predictions from a large number of theories, the majority of which have never been tested meta-analytically until now. Studies were included if they contained a treatment group exposed to a fear appeal, a valid comparison group, a manipulation of depicted fear, a measure of attitudes, intentions, or behaviors concerning the targeted risk or recommended solution, and adequate statistics to calculate effect sizes. The meta-analysis included 127 papers (9% unpublished) yielding 248 independent samples (NTotal = 27,372) collected from diverse populations. Results showed a positive effect of fear appeals on attitudes, intentions, and behaviors, with the average effect on a composite index being random-effects d¯ = 0.29. Moderation analyses based on prominent fear appeal theories showed that the effectiveness of fear appeals increased when the message included efficacy statements, depicted high susceptibility and severity, recommended one-time only (vs. repeated) behaviors, and targeted audiences that included a larger percentage of female message recipients. Overall, we conclude that (a) fear appeals are effective at positively influencing attitude, intentions, and behaviors, (b) there are very few circumstances under which they are not effective, and (c) there are no identified circumstances under which they backfire and lead to undesirable outcomes.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Social Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7940c739aafad42be93bddeda83667a658986963

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Citations in the corpus

Framing Climate Change: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Generating Advocacy Behavior (2018, background): “…meta-analytic investigations of fear appeal research, which support a positive linear relationship between fear and persuasive outcomes generally (Tannenbaum et al., 2015; Witte & Allen, 2000), though there is strong evidence that fear can generate maladaptive message responses, such as…”
The Common-Sense Model of Self-Regulation (CSM): a dynamic framework for understanding illness self-management (2016, positive): “As the level of fear was irrelevant, it appeared that the representation of the threat, not the momentary affective component, was critical for action when combined with the plan (Leventhal, 1970; Tannenbaum et al., 2015).”
Emotional responses to prosocial messages increase willingness to self-isolate during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020, background): “Research on public health campaigns typically examine specific emotions (Nabi et al., 2018; Ojala, 2012; Tannenbaum et al., 2015; Witte & Allen, 2000), but these approaches constrain a person's emotional experiences by limiting them to identifying with a set of discrete emotions pre-selected by the ”
Drivers’ experiences during floods: Investigating the psychological influences underpinning decisions to avoid driving through floodwater (2017, background): “efficacy messages built into the campaigns are most effective in addressing behaviours that are less common (Tannenbaum et al., 2015; Wakefield et al., 2010), such as avoiding driving through floodwater.”
Increasing Vaccination: Putting Psychological Science Into Action (2017, background): “people experience both heightened fear and a feeling of efficacy for taking action to ameliorate the threat (Tannenbaum et al., 2015).”
Climate of hope or doom and gloom? Testing the climate change hope vs. fear communications debate through online videos (2021, background): “This was an important first step in the analysis because, as Witte (1992) describes, fear appeal studies should examine whether their messages evoked their intended emotional responses.”