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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