What is the “Fear” in a Fear-Arousing Appeal?

Abstract

Studies of the effectiveness of threat, or fear-arousal, in persuasion seem to have assumed that the same variable was being investigated even though different kinds of fear may have been aroused and different measures of fear were used. These different kinds of fear may be grouped in two categories: (a) an affective nausea-type fear and (b) a more cognitive concern-type fear. Responses of 60 junior-high and 126 college students to communications on the dangers of marijuana were obtained on five measures used previously: fear, anxiety, nausea, worry, and concern. rs among measures were significant ( p < .01), but fear, anxiety, nausea, and worry showed high intercorrelations, while concern showed lower correlations with the other four measures. The findings are consistent with the suggestion that there may have been different kinds of “fear” involved in research on fear appeals.

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