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The ability to change another person’s attitude towards a topic, object or other individual is very important in society and has been. It’s a key tool in marketing, law, parenting, the media and even the health sector. It can be used to encourage people to do positive things, such as care for their health, and follow the law. However, it is a double-edged sword, as a key technique in war time is the production of mass amounts of propaganda and media that perpetrate false stereotypes about the enemy. A team of researchers at Yale University investigated the different factors that affect attitude change and persuasion, and the different conditions that it occurs under. These included features of the source, the message, and the audience that received it; this was collectively called the Yale Attitude Change Approach (Hovland et al. 1953).
This essay will be focussing on the features of the message factor: fear arousal and complexity. Based on previous research, we can predict that message factors such as fear and complexity are effective at promoting attitude change, however, they are mediated by other factors such as individual differences in participants and features of the source.
Hovland and his team at Yale investigated multiple “motivating appeals” (Hovland, Janis, and Kelley, 1953), which are features of a stimulus that are designed to persuade an individual to agree with it. In particular, they looked at “emotional appeals”, a category of stimuli that intended to produce obedience through emotion, rather than presenting logic or facts. One of the most commonly researched emotions involved in attitude change has been fear. The use of fear as a persuasion technique is a practice that has been long present in our society, from using it to instil obedience in children to enforcing the law. However, the levels of fear needed for attitude change had not been considered in much detail.
The fear arousal factor of a message refers to how numerous messages, such as those present in the media and marketing industry, use frightening images or statements in order to induce compliance. This is most often seen in health warnings; for example, threats of lung disease and images of damaged lungs are used to discourage the audience from smoking. Research by Janis and Feshbach (1953) investigated how three different levels of fear-arousing material in a presentation about dental hygiene affect attitude change.
The participants in the study were 200 students from a high school (M = 15 years) in Connecticut, USA. These students were separated into 4 groups using a randomisation technique. Every group was well balanced in terms of gender, IQ and educational attainment.
Three of the groups would experience different amounts of fear-arousing material in a presentation about dental hygiene. The presentation had three forms: Form 1 had a strong fear appeal, emphasizing severe negative consequences of neglecting dental hygiene, such as tooth decay and diseased gums, in a manner that was personalised and directed towards the audience, i.e. “This can happen to you”. Form 2 was presented less strongly, contained mild material and the tone was more factual. The third form was the mildest, as most of the fear-arousing material was substituted with factual information about the functions and growth of teeth. The fourth group acted as a control, and viewed a similar presentation but on a different topic (the human eye). All students filled out a questionnaire a week before the presentation, as well as one immediately after, and one a week after that. The first questionnaire asked about general dental hygiene and habits. The second one aimed to measure how the presentation was perceived, i.e., how much information was acquired, and the emotional (affective) reactions to it.
There was a significant difference found between the levels of fear felt in the Form 1 group and the Form 3 group, at p > 0.05. The results from the Form 2 group were intermediate and did not differ significantly from the other 2 groups. These findings suggest that the Form 1 group that experienced a presentation with high fear appeal, later experienced more worry and fear about the condition of their own teeth, in contrast to the minimal appeal group.
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