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Daniel J. O’Keefe PUBLICATIONS AND PAPERS
[http://www.dokeefe.net/publicationlist.html] - - public:weinreich
research on health comm messaging effects
Appealing to fear: A Meta-Analysis of Fear Appeal Effectiveness and Theories
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5789790/?fbclid=IwAR1HekVX1NeS8njx68dt0sYqca4GWRsK3fLeMkgRfrT-j17Q4Jjyuab0uYk] - - public:weinreich
Fear appeals are effective. The present meta-analysis found that fear appeals were successful at influencing attitudes, intentions, and behaviors across nearly all conditions that were analyzed. Even when a moderator was unrelated to fear appeal effectiveness, fear appeals were still more effective than comparison treatments. Further, there was not one level of any moderator that we tested for which fear appeals backfired to produce worse outcomes relative to the comparison groups.