Janis and Feshbach (1958)

Aims

To investigate the consequences on emotions and behaviour of fear appeals in communications about dental hygiene.

Procedures

Laboratory experiment – 200 US High school students, 50 per group

Independent measures design – 3 groups:

1. High Fear Arousal – Pictures and description of diseased mouths and explanation of diseases and consequences.
2. Moderate Fear Arousal – Similar pictures and description of group 1 but less disturbing.
3. Minimal Fear Arousal – Lecture about teeth and cavities, without pictures or consequences.
4. Control Group – Given lecture about structure of human eye

Questionnaire used to record emotional reactions – one week before, after lecture, one week later

Findings

• Amount of knowledge did not differ between the three groups
• High fear arousal = seen in more positive light, but more participants said they disliked something and the slides were considered unpleasant to 28% of participants. There was an increase in dental hygiene of 8%.
• Moderate fear group = 22% increase in conformity
• Minimal fear group = 36% increase in conformity
• Control group = 0% increase

Conclusions

The overall effectiveness of a health promotion campaign is likely to be reduced by the use of strong fear appeal, as it produced the least change in behaviour.

Fear appeals can be helpful in changing behaviours, but it is important that the level of fear is tailored to each audience

Strengths:

• Validity – independent variable was well defined and manipulated.
• Useful – it helps with increasing health behaviour in individuals, and found that fear arousal may not be the most effective way of promotion healthy living.

 Weaknesses:

• Ethnocentrism – the sample consisted of first year students only, therefore we can argue that it is difficult to generalise the results to wider populations.
• Reductionism – the experiment has not considered the wider causes for the adoption of health behaviours.
• Low generalisability – we cannot easily generalise the results to other fear appeals for example of smoking or drink driving because they were not researched.