Fear Arousal Theory

• Fear as a drive:

  ·         Motivates people to change behaviour

  ·         Fear accompanied by physiological and psychological arousal that makes us feel uncomfortable

  ·         We change our behaviour to avoid fear
• Fear Behaviour relationship: Low fear

  ·         message that arouses little or no fear does not change behaviour. This is because arousal experienced from recipient is not unpleasant enough to produce motivation needed
• Fear behaviour relationship: Medium fear

  produces enough unpleasant arousal to trigger a drive and therefore recipient more likely to change their behaviour
• Fear behaviour relationship: High fear

  ·         is counterproductive. Produces a lot of unpleasant arousal but will not change behaviour, because too much fear is produced that recipient believes their behaviour isn’t enough to change unpleasant state. But unpleasant state still needs to be reduced. Instead of stopping behaviour, individuals may conclude “this isn’t aimed at me”

  ·         Denial reduces the fear arousal state so is therefore negatively reinforced.
• Predicting behaviour change

  ·         Fear arousal predicts (for example) a smoker will stop smoking if they:

  ·         Experience a moderate amount of fear

  ·         Understand their current behaviour makes them vulnerable to this

  ·         Identify a behavioural change that will reduce their state of unpleasant arousal.
• Evaluation

   

  ·         Support for effectiveness. Research investigated the health behaviour of getting vaccinated against tetanus. Arousing fear in the risk of tetanus, did increase number of individual who got vaccinated

  ·         Some research has found low fear creates the most likely behaviour change, which is not supported the fear-persuasion curvilinear relationship

  It is hard to measure fear-could individuals reactions be something like disgust instead.