Review How Disgust Enhances the Effectiveness of Fear Appeals

Understanding Consumer Behaviour Theory
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Understanding Consumer Behaviour Theory
The review focuses on the article The Disgust Paper by Andrea C. Morales, Eugenia C. Wu, and Gavan J. Fitzsimons. Previous research studies delved on how fear appeals are used as persuasion techniques. This article, on the other hand, explores how the presence or absence of disgust may contribute to fear appeal effectiveness. Four studies are conducted to investigate the persuasive effects of disgust.
The article generally aims to explore how the presence or absence of disgust will likely influence persuasion and precisely, how disgust is likely to affect the effectiveness of fear appeals. Previous research indicates that using fear to motivate behavior is a common persuasion technique. Morales, Wu, & Fitzsimons (2012) note that fear-based persuasion appeals are used to promote a wide variety of consumer goods and services. The article also notes that such appeals have been used to address multiple public health issues such as AIDS prevention, breast self-examination, drug use, teen pregnancy, poor eating habits, and drunk-driving (p. 384). The impact of fear appeals in persuasion is still debatable with some practitioners believing in their effectiveness and others openly questioning the persuasion impact. Morales, Wu, & Fitzsimons (2012) observes that the majority of previous research indicate that there is a positive monotonic relationship between fear and persuasion. Conversely, the article demonstrates that fear usually obstructs message acceptance sometimes.
The research question being addressed by this study is: ‘How does disgust enhance the effectiveness of fear appeals?’. Fear appeals can be efficient or not based on such factors as the level of fear; perceived vulnerability to the threat; perceived severity of the threat; perceived self-efficacy; perceived response efficacy; self-construal and message format and previous adherence level. The presence or absence of the disgust-eliciting element has been added as another factor in this research. This research was conducted for three reasons. First, previous research has indicated that disgust correlates highly with elements of fear thus confirming that fear and disgust can be co-activated naturally. Second, successful fear appeals have also featured elements of disgust, and lastly, despite the significant role of disgust in persuasion, little is known regarding its specific role in fear appeals and persuasion.
Four studies were involved in this research. Research hypotheses include:
H1: The disgust and fear appeal are most persuasive in terms of participants’ likelihood to use illegal drugs in the future.
H2: Participants in the disgust and fear condition indicate a higher likelihood of using sunscreen than participants in either the fear-only or the neutral conditions.
H3: Participants in the disgust and fear condition will continue to display increased persuasion and compliance relative to participants in either the fear-only or the neutral conditions, across both learning and behavioral intention measures.
H4: Participants in the disgust and fear condition indicate a higher likelihood of choosing Int...