Fear arousal is widely used in persuasive campaigns and behavioral change interventions.
Yet, experimental evidence argues against the use of threatening health information. The …

Objective: Risk beliefs are central to most theories of health behavior, yet many unanswered
questions remain about an increasingly studied risk construct, anticipated regret. The …

Despite decades of research, consensus regarding the dynamics of fear appeals remains
elusive. A meta-analysis was conducted that was designed to resolve this controversy …

Use of fear appeals assumes that when people are emotionally confronted with the negative
effects of their behaviour they will change that behaviour. That reasoning is simple and …

It is a common finding that recipients of threatening health-promoting information are
motivated to dismiss or disregard the information, thus reacting 'defensively'. This article …

Cyber security researchers are starting to experiment with fear appeals, with a wide variety
of designs and reported efficaciousness. This makes it hard to derive recommendations for …

Social campaigns are persuasive messages that attempt to communicate positive ideas and
practices. One of the main challenges in designing effective social campaigns is the need to …

Threatening communication is a widely applied method in behavior change interventions,
which at the same time has been heavily criticized in the psychological literature. The …

Electroencephalography (EEG) offers insights into the neural responses of consumers to
marketing stimuli which can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of such stimuli in directing …

Objective: Individuals have a large repertoire of defensive strategies for dealing with
personally relevant negative feedback including health risk information. Defensive …