Fear Appeals

Fear Mongering and theCulture of Fear"It’s a campaign of fear and consumption…keep people afraid and they’ll consume.” Marilyn Manson

Scare tactics are common

• Fear mongering increases during “Sweeps” periods (February, May, July, and November), when Nielson ratings are taken.– “Sexual predators on

myspace.com”– “Is household mold quietly killing

you?”– “What your nail salon operator

won’t tell you.”– “Thongs and skin cancer! Film at

11.”

Swine Flu: Oh s*#t, we’re all gonna die!

• It’s a global pandemic

• It could kill millions

• WHO raised the risk level to 5 on a scale of 6

Or maybe not

• L.A. Times, April 30, 2009: “Swine flu spread may be mild”

• regular flu (influenza) kills about 30,00 people per year.

Bird flu: Death from Above?

• “bird flu is "a time bomb waiting to go off," – Dr. Anthony Fauci, National

Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,

• "society just can't accept the idea that 50% of the population could die."– Dr. Robert Webster, virologist

Or media hype?

• “bird flu virus is still multiple mutations away from being able to pass easily among humans.”

• “bird flu appears to be better absorbed by the deep pockets of bird lungs, whereas human flu is absorbed by the cells of our upper airways.”– Dr. Marc Siegel, New York

University School of Medicine, author of Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic. Los Angeles Times, April 6, 2006

Other exotic diseases

• Mad cow disease

• West Nile virus

• Sars• Anthrax• Ebola• Flesh

eating virus

• Yet, no one has died from exposure to BSE within the U.S.

• No one has died from bird flu in the U.S.

Political fear mongering

• Nationalized hea;th insurance and “death panels”

• Terrorism, terrorist alerts• Social security• Illegal immigrants• Outsourcing of jobs to foreign

countries

Pharmaceutical industry and fear mongering

• Is the purple pill right for you?

• Serafem for premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), (prozac for PMS)

• Pharmaceutical firms claim they are “empowering consumers” by running ads

• But are they creating unnecessary demand?

• U.S. drug makers spend 2.5 times as much on marketing and administration as they do on research.

• 75 percent of new drugs approved by the FDA are me-too drugs “no better than drugs already on the market to treat the same condition.” – Marcia Angell, former

editor of the New England Journal of Medicine

Child abductions

• High profile abductions spur fear– Polly Klass, Amber

Hagerman, Elizabeth Smart, Samantha Runnion

• News stories on child abductions have increased 10-fold in the past five years

• Abduction prevention is a big business– GPS tracking, DNA

samples

• The actual risk of a child being abducted and murdered is 1 in 1.3 million (Ropeak, 2005)

• Child abductions have decreased in the past five years

• 75% of child abductions are not by strangers (e.g., they involve custody disputes)

• By comparison, the risk of a child dying from the flu is 1 in 130,000.

Other fear-laden topics

• school shootings• cell phones and brain cancer• identity theft• genetically engineered food• road rage• sexual predators• violent crime

Selling the fear of fear

• A number of popular best sellers decrying fear-mongering have appeared in print.

Keep the numbers in perspective

• School shootings• Total school-related

violent deaths, August 1, 2005, July 31, 2007:

• Shooting: 13Suicides: 6  Murder-Suicide: 8

• Fight-Related: 1• Stabbing: 4• Other:               0• Total = 27

• Compared to drownings and car crashes

• In 2003, 782 children ages 0 to 14 years died from drowning (CDC 2005).

• During 2004, 1,638 children ages 14 years and younger died in motor vehicle crashes

Keeping the numbers in perspective

• 35,000 injuries per year from nail guns

• Food allergy fatalities 100-200 per year

• Bathtubs: 337 fatalities

• Dog bites: 15 fatalities

• Fireworks: 13 fatalities

• Hornets, wasps, and bees: 46 fatalities 

• Lightning: 63 fatalities

What really is dangerous?

• The number one cause of preventable deaths. There are 46.5 million American smokers. About 440,000 of them will die this year.

• Forty percent of all deaths in the US are due to heart disease - to the tune of 950,000 people lost every year.

• Cancer is our second most common cause of death; 550,000 people die from cancer every year.

• There is an alcohol-related death every 30 minutes in the US.

• Obesity is a major contributor to heart disease and diabetes, it afflicts 61% of all Americans.

• Sexually Transmitted Diseases: There will be 40,000 new cases of HIV diagnosed in the US this year.

Caveats and cautions

• Use central processing when analyzing fear appeals

• Keep the numbers in perspective– Road rage: 40 deaths per year versus failing to

wear a seatbelt 9,200 preventable fatalities per year

– Shark attack 3 deaths per year in the U.S. versus skin cancer 8,000 cases per year

– West Nile 100 deaths per year in the U.S., versus drowning in a bathtub 300 cases per year