Threatening communication: a critical re-analysis and a revised meta-analytic test of fear appeal theory

By Gjalt-Jorn Ygram Peters, Robert A. C. Ruiter, Gerjo Kok. Health Psychology Review, 2013

637 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Abstract Despite decades of research, consensus regarding the dynamics of fear appeals remains elusive. A meta-analysis was conducted that was designed to resolve this controversy. Publications that were included in previous meta-analyses were re-analysed, and a number of additional publications were located. The inclusion criteria were full factorial orthogonal manipulations of threat and efficacy, and measurement of behaviour as an outcome. Fixed and random effects models were used to compute mean effect size estimates. Meta-analysis of the six studies that satisfied the inclusion criteria clearly showed a significant interaction between threat and efficacy, such that threat only had an effect under high efficacy (d=0.31), and efficacy only had an effect under high threat (d=0.71). Inconsistency in results regarding the effectiveness of threatening communication can likely be attributed to flawed methodology. Proper tests of fear appeal theory yielded the theoretically hypothesised interaction effect. Threatening communication should exclusively be used when pilot studies indicate that an intervention successfully enhances efficacy.

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/85a2e23ea3e80ab8e924fddb75468be71aec0b9b

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In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

A taxonomy of behaviour change methods: an Intervention Mapping approach (2015, positive): “Finally, fear appeals are only effective when the at-risk population has high (self-)ef ﬁ cacy and they may be counter effective when ef ﬁ cacy is low (Peters, Ruiter, & Kok, 2013).”
The use of positive and negative appeals in social advertising: a content analysis of television ads for preventing HIV/AIDS (2021, background): “Negative appeals are suggested by the literature to be more appropriate for low levels of perceived message response efficacy or perceived self-efficacy (Block & Keller, 1995), although this is contradicted by other authors, who state the opposite (Peters et al., 2013).”
Multidisciplinary research priorities for the COVID-19 pandemic: a call for action for mental health science (2020, background): “adherence to health behaviours, 90 and can help people to manage psychological distress.”
Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories (2015, methodology): “analyses concerning the use of efficacy statements (de Hoog et al., 2007; Peters et al., 2012; Witte & Allen, 2000).”
The dangers of distrustful complacency: Low concern and low political trust combine to undermine compliance with governmental restrictions in the emerging Covid-19 pandemic (2020, background): “…one wanted to bolster compliance through increased concern, one would have to carefully aim for a reasonable level of concern and make sure this is accompanied with strong feelings of efficacy (Peters et al., 2013), to avoid provoking panic behaviour or defensive reactance and denial (Witte, 1994).”
Understanding Public Hurricane Evacuation Decisions and Responses to Forecast and Warning Messages (2016, background): “…fear appeals indicates that message recipients are less likely to take protective action and more likely to have defensive responses when their efficacy (beliefs about their ability to effectively protect against the threat) is low (e.g., Witte 1992, 1994; Witte and Allen 2000; Peters et al. 2013).”