Fear appeal communications aim to persuade people to change their risky behavior by describing adverse consequences that will happen to them if they do not follow what the message recommends. Although fear imagery has been the subject of extensive research, no previous neuroscientific studies have investigated brain correlates of fear imagery in print advertising. Using real sets of advertisements within a block design functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) random effect model, this study investigated neural mechanisms associated with fear appeal in advertising. Results showed that, compared to other types of advertisements, fear imagery elicited increased activation in several brain areas associated with (i) contingency awareness such as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), (ii) emotional appraisal such as the amygdala and the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), and (iii) episodic retrieval of polymodal imagery such as the hippocampus and the precuneus. This result suggests that, contrary to other types of advertisements, fear appeal advertisements are dealt with in different brain pathways. This finding lends strong support to the surprise/shock hypothesis, which argues that fear imagery elicits increased brain processing and more robust recall.
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