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Abstract
Building on a previous study (Shen, 2010), this paper investigates the effectiveness of fear- versus empathy-arousing antismoking PSAs and examines the roles of message-induced fear and state empathy in persuasion. Twelve professionally produced antismoking PSAs were used as stimuli messages in a 3 (message type: empathy, fear vs. control) × 4 (messages) mixed design study. The 260 participants were randomly assigned to each message type and watched four PSAs presented in a random sequence. Results from multilevel modeling analyses showed that empathy-arousing messages are potentially more effective than fear-arousing ones. Both fear and state empathy were found to have a positive direct effect on persuasion. However, fear also had a negative indirect impact on persuasion by activating psychological reactance, while state empathy also had a positive indirect effect by inhibiting psychological reactance. Implications for persuasion, health communication campaigns, and future research were discussed.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research is supported by a pilot grant from the CDC Southern Center for Health Communication and Poverty and CDC Center of Excellence grant 1P01CD000242-01 to Vicki Freimuth. The author thanks Todd Lee Goen for his assistance in data collection, and Sean Hendricks for assistance in Medialab programming.
Notes
1Synopses of all 12 PSAs are available upon request.