Fear Appeal Essay

Rhetorical appeal is intended to persuade individuals to think a certain way, conduct themselves in a certain manner, or the purchase particular products. Unlike speech in which an individual relies on their persona and content of speech to get their point across to an audience or consumer, advertisements use images to enhance the impact and appeal of logos, ethos, and pathos.

Advertising is a complicated form of marketing, it’s almost like an art form. One must be acutely aware of their audience and what captures their attention, otherwise the advertisement will fall flat. There is a myriad of different ways to lure consumers into buying a product; for example, the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) managed through a series of advertisements to convince individuals of the importance in getting a vaccination for the influenza virus. It was applied using multiple techniques, namely the methods of universal appeal and association. These techniques helped the CDC to effectively promotes the flu vaccine and get their message across to a wide range of people.

The allure of fear is interesting for some people for several reasons. These people have another perspective of how they react when they see something scary or read it. They don’t react the same way as other people that don’t like scary things. Other people like to be scared. Some people motivate others by saying to them they are not so scary and everything that is happening there is not real, since they use fiction elements, like characters, details and scenarios. These scary elements have real details but also have scenarios that are not real, this means it is magical realism. This thought of liking scary things is a physiological problem. Scientist make an article showing proof that there is a big pole of people that like scary scenarios.

Fear: an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat(Websters Dictionary).Fear is something that our lives have adapted to rarely use as our ancient predecessors have.In our day and age the concept of fear comes through the stress of work. We humans no longer fear a cold nor do we fear storms as our houses protect us and on average our life spans are longer as old in the Paleolithic was 33 while currently it is 71.5(Wikipedia Life Expectancy). Why then is our fear so extensive that it can make us freeze up? “The answer is our legacy of ancient fears, the result of having spent millions of years running from predators. Our fear response is more influenced by the ancient species we struggled to escape than any modern challenges.”(The evolutionary legacy of having been prey.By Rob Dunn) This is one of the statements about human life. If this is so how do we develop from terror to finding fear fun?

The persuasive technique of appeal to fear is prominent in the anti-meth commercials due to the fact that these commercials focus primarily on frightening situations to try and persuade the targeted audience not to try meth even once. According to Logical Self Defense, appealing to fear is used in an “attempt to induce belief or action” (9), and an example of this would be “I have a gun! Gimme the money!” (9).

During the Salem witch trials, many lives that were taken due to a few people’s self defence. In the book, The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, a group of girls caused a whole town to go array. This group of girls were caught naked, dancing and conjuring spirits. These girls were going to accept the blame and receive the whipping for what they did, but one of the girls, Abigail, was not about to go down. Abigail had the whole group of girls convinced that it would be best to lie and to not accept the beating. By doing this, they were put into the court and used to tell the judges whether or not the people whom were accused were truly witches. Though the girls had no way of telling if the accused were truly witches, they

The definition of fear is an unpleasant emotion resulting in being afraid of someone or something that is a dangerous threat. However, fear can come in many forms and affect people in several different ways. Fear is evident in all areas of life. Everyone experiences fear whether the outcome is positive or negative. Fear is no doubt inevitable. For example,whenever you have to present a speech, you may fear ridicule or judgement. Or when you are walking to your car late at night by yourself, you fear many dangerous situations that can happen. According to Mary C. Lamia in “The Complexity of Fear” in Psychology Today, fear in terms of psychology is described as the fear of the unknown, fear of death, and catastrophic fear. Mary C. Lamia has found

Fear propaganda is common in today’s world, but sometimes we do not even realize it. “There are four elements to a successful fear appeal: 1) a threat, 2) a specific recommendation about how the audience should

AT&T’s use of pathos is effective because the commercial itself provokes an array of different emotions. The viewer goes through different emotions such as confusion, sadness, anger, and fear. All of these emotions combined can be effective to get a driver to think twice about becoming distracted next time they are driving. One major component that will affect the viewer is fear. By using scare tactics a company can have a positive effect on changing a consumer’s behavior for the better. According to Amanda Ray in “The Four Letter Word in Advertising: Fear”, she states that Jennifer Perkins from Smith Brothers Agency suggests that fear appeals alerting people to dangers could be effective, due to the public good and the advertisers interests are congruent. Ray also quotes Todd Van Slyke an advertising instructor at The Illinois Institute of Art as saying, “ Fear appeals strike a nerve with people who have doubts about things or do not know about things,’ Slyke goes on to say that, “ They play on our inherent fears of the unknown or that something is going to kill us. This is why scare tactics are stunningly

The NHS are persistently coming up with new ways of communicating the dangers of excessive use of health jeopardizing substances such as , drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. Their uses of shock tactics to scare the viewer into giving up their dangerous habit provoke a topic of conversation but are these extreme methods still not enough to get the message across?

Which school has been targeted today? Should I help my child put on a bulletproof vest? Almost every day when we turn on the TV, there is a news about shooting. We are glued to the TV screen, feeling like living the extremely dangerous era. However, Barry Glassner, sociologist, claims that our sense of fear has been exaggerated intentionally, and we have remained enormously fearful for questionable dangers. Glassner’s book The Culture of Fear discloses that journalists, politicians and organizations handle our sense of fear to grab our attention and profit from our anxiety, giving actual cases. Glassner showcases crimes in the news that hid facts behind fictional things, that employed temporary crimes to avoid reporting existent crimes, and that were reported in the way

The threat component in threat appeals includes material that describes the unwanted consequences of an external threat, and the likelihood that the individual will experience these consequences. The action component is composed of instructions for an effective response to an external threat in addition to material concerning an individual’s ability to execute that response. The two components are typically presented in a problem-solution format, such that individuals are first presented with a danger, and then exposed to a means of addressing danger (Meczkowski, 2015). The drive model used in this study helps to provide a scientific explanation of threat appeals. People in the medium group exhibit the highest level of message acceptance, while those in the low and high groups will show less persuasion. A threat appeal will be effective to the extent that it produces a fear response that rises, then falls. The functional form of the relationship between fear and persuasion is best described as an inverted U-curve curve. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two threat conditions, both of which described the consequences of periodontal disease (Meczkowski, 2015). A large body of threat appeal research demonstrates that the form of the fear–persuasion relationship is linear and positive in between person’s data.

In chapter 24 “The Fear Appeal” they begin talking about the similarities that Jonathon Edward and Adolf Hitler had with the words they spoke, when talking to both of their audiences and how both compelled their audiences by propagandizing fear and the threats if an action was not followed. The chapter then goes on to talk about those who also play on fear/anxieties to get what they need from others like for instants life insurance agents, Parents, Physicians, and The nightly news, and political party. All these are used to instill in power over others and the way they think. The chapter continues to discuss the difference of fear appeals and illegitimate fears, how fear appeals can be powerful also “They channel our thoughts away from careful consideration of the issue at hand and toward plans for ridding ourselves of the fear” and as for illegitimate fears that can “Promote deception- not mention the cruelty of the fear itself.” but with all this being said so far, this doesn’t mean that all fear appeals is successful every time it's used. For example, the chapter uses public service announcements to alert viewers about the danger of drug abuse and how users can possibly contract AIDS, by saying that the

The message conveyed through advertising influences the purchasing decisions of consumers. That’s why advertiser uses the three appeals as a way of persuading people to buy certain products or to understand the message that they’re trying to convey. For most advertising appeals, they are designed in a way that creates a positive image of the content in the ad. However for this advertisement, that is not the case at all because the attitude and the message of this posters is to make them understand that a change must take place. These ads are using an advertising strategy of appeal to the reader's pathos.

Fear is a feeling created in a response to a perceived danger. Fear can produce pleasure, heighten awareness, be in the form of phobia, a fear of the unknown and an instinctual response to danger.