Fear Arousal in Public Health Campaigns

F14 H 571by

Molly Elliott

Green and Witte

• Can Fear Arousal in Public Health Campaigns Contribute to the Decline of HIV Prevalence?

Journal of Health Communication, 2006

• 1953: Janis and Feshbach publish the first study of fear appeal

• Fear arousing messages backfire

• Controversial

History of Fear-

Based Messages

• 1980’s - 2000’s: Meta-analyses of fear appeal

• EPPM (Witte, 1992, 1998; Witte, Meyer, & Martell, 2001): Reconciles differences in historical literature

History of Fear-Based Messages

“Early scare campaigns seem to havelittle impact on peoples’ actions.”

…”we know for example, that public responses to fear messages is [sic] not optimal.

It results in short-term behavior change but no behavior change over the long run”.

Uganda’s success

story

Why object?

• Sex-positive Western views object to fear based messaging

Conclusions

• ’86 - ’91: Strongest fear appeal

• Mid ’90’s - on: Softer approach

• Call for bringing fear appeal back