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The Effect Of Fear And How They Can Affect Behavior

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Dr. R.W. Rogers created the Protection Motivation Theory in 1975. He proposed this theory to explain the effects of fear and how they can affect behavior. Rogers explained that fear initiates a cognitive process where the person takes into account a threat appraisal and a response appraisal which results in an adaptive or maladaptive behavior. Much of his work was based on Richard Lazarus and Howard Leventhal’s work on how people cope with fear. Their work focused on fear reaction divided into two processes: danger control (threat appraisal) derived from environmental cues and fear control (coping appraisal) an internal process. Rogers created the first three constructs of PMT based on environmental cues. They are referred to as threat …show more content…

Maladaptive behaviors include smoking to relieve stress from work or procrastinating on a paper to avoid the stress. The rewards that come from smoking maybe the reduced anxiety brought on by the psychological effects of smoking. The rewards of procrastinating is that a person has more time to do activities that he or she likes instead of working. Perceived severity is how a person sees the gravity of the threat. Young people may think that a broken bone is not much of an injury and they will heal quickly. However, and elderly person my see this threat as more severe because older people do not recover as well from these types of injuries as well as young people. Perceived vulnerability is how a person considers likelihood the threat affecting him or her. People that live in colder temperatures were mosquitos do not thrive see themselves as less likely to contract West Nile virus or Zika whereas people in warmer climates see themselves as very vulnerable to such threats. The coping appraisal process takes into account the response efficacy and self-efficacy. In addition to these two constructs the cost of the recommended behavior is also taken into account. Response efficacy takes into account how well the adaptive behavior will alleviate the perceived threat. Instead of smoking, a person may try meditation or exercise to relieve stress. The effectiveness of the recommended behavior is different for everyone and meditation may work better for one

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