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In advertising, a fear pattern is a sequence of fear arousal and fear reduction that is felt by the viewing audience when exposed to an advertisement which attempts to threaten the audience by presenting a negative physical, psychological or social consequence that is likely to occur if they engage in a particular behaviour. Fear appeals are commonly used in social marketing campaigns. These are sometimes called “threat appeals”, however the label “fear appeals” is justified if the appeal can be shown to arouse fear.
Contents
Methods
The fear pattern of an advertisement can largely be identified as either fear-relief or fear-only. A fear-relief pattern involves arousing fear and causing the audience to experience an unpleasant feeling that is then reduced by showing the consequences of the recommended behaviour. A fear-only pattern is created by only arousing fear and not reducing fear by providing relief components within an advertisement. The possibilities for different classifications of fear reduction include no reduction in fear (fear-only), partial reduction in fear (fear-partial relief), or complete reduction in fear (fear-relief).
A dynamic, temporal measure of fear is necessary to determine the fear pattern exhibited by a broadcast (TV or radio) anti-speeding advertisement. This requires continuous response measurement (CRM).
The fear patterning theory suggests that it is not the absolute amount of fear that drives attitude change or behaviour change, but the sequence of fear then reduction in fear, that is, relief felt by the audience.
Relief is an emotion that is normally preceded by some other higher level of arousal, such as fear, or anxiety, that is, relief generally cannot occur without the precursor of the emotion of fear, and is a result of the removal or reduction of the fearful feeling.
The fear pattern theory proposes that a sequence of fear then relief stimuli will be optimal in causing attitude and/or behaviour change. The proposed fear pattern theory builds on Hovland, Janis and Kelley’s (1953) fear-as-acquired-drive (drive-reduction) model that was one of the earlier major theories of how fear appeals work, based on the assumption that it is fear reduction that makes such an appeal effective.
Drive-reduction theory assumes that “the reduction of emotional tension operates as a reinforcement of the reassuring recommendation” (Janis and Feshbach, 1953, p. 64). That is, once fear is aroused and creates motivation for action (drive), any relief stimuli (such as the recommended behaviour) that decreases the fear is a reinforcement of the recommended behaviour (Witte and Allen, 2000).
Research
The overwhelming majority of previous studies have focused upon the effect of fear arousal (Bennett, 1996; Keller and Block 1996; Strong, Anderson and Dubas, 1993), but have not investigated the effect of fear reduction. Both Sutton (1982) and Job (1988) signalled the need for research into the effect of fear reduction.
Original articles
Algie, Jennifer,. (2011), The Importance of Fear-Reduction in Fear-Based Road Safety Advertising Appeals, Journal of the Australasian College of Road Safety, 22(4), 89 - 95.
Algie, Jennifer and Rossiter, John. R., (2010), Fear Patterns: A New Approach to Designing Road Safety Advertisements, Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 38 (4), 261- 279.
Rossiter, John.R. and Thornton, Jennifer, (2004), Fear-Pattern Analysis Supports the Fear-Drive Model for Anti-Speeding Road Safety TV Ads, Psychology & Marketing. Vol. 21, No. 11, pp. 945–960.
Thornton, Jennifer and Rossiter, John R., (2004), The Effectiveness of Threat-only messages versus Threat-and-Efficacy Messages in Anti-Speeding Advertisements, 2004 Road Safety Research, Policing and Education Conference, Perth, Australia.