Health promotion campaigns that play on fear may be promoting counter-productive effects if they aren't designed correctly, warns a team of researchers who field tested one such campaign.
Researchers at Michigan State University found that the key to ensuring successful scare tactic campaigns is to give individuals specific information about the effectiveness of a recommended action as well as clear information on how to actually do what is recommended.
If no such information is given about a desired health behavior change, then scare tactic campaigns may cause people to deny they're at risk for experiencing health hazards, says Kim Witte, PhD, and her colleagues in the October Health Education & Behavior.
"Fear appeal campaigns can produce multiple outcomes, some of which interfere with desired behavior changes," they write, and while some such campaigns do persuade people that they face a significant threat, if not done correctly they also promote denial or avoidance of the issue, which prevents people from taking action to reduce their risk.
Witte and her colleagues tested the effectiveness of a fear campaign designed to reduce the risk of genital warts caused by human papilloma virus (HPV) -- the number one sexually transmitted disease on many college campuses.
About half of their sample of 219 college women received a brochure on HPV with vivid, personalized language describing the consequences of infection. They also completed questionnaires designed to assess their fear of HPV, if they believed condoms could reduce their risk, and the extent to which they discounted the HPV threat.
Overall, Witte and her colleagues found that only women who felt
threatened by HPV were motivated to protect themselves against the disease.
Those who did not feel threatened failed to respond "in either positive or
negative ways to the campaign -- they simply ignored it" and made no changes in
attitudes
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Contact: Kim Witte, PhD
wittek@pilot.msu.edu
(517) 355-9659
Center for the Advancement of Health
1-Sep-1998