| Abstract: | Death is commonly used as a threat, both by fear-appeal researchers and by social marketing and health promotion practitioners (eg ‘Quit smoking or you'll die’). Fear (or threat) appeal researchers have frequently used death to arouse fear, and particularly in the ‘high’ fear condition. It is argued here that death is a ‘special case’ threat, and that the introduction of death in high fear conditions is a confounder in that death is a qualitatively different negative outcome from the non-death negative outcomes used in low fear conditions. The use of death in threat appeals requires attention in its own right for a number of reasons. First, death will occur eventually regardless of the message recipient's behaviour. Hence, messages that threaten death may arouse defensive responses in the target audience (eg ‘you've got to go sometime’), and unresolvable anxiety in the general population. Secondly, death can vary on a number of attributes (eg age at death, sudden versus prolonged, etc), and, while most threat appeals imply premature death, few studies have made this point explicit. Thirdly, the fear of death is multidimensional and some dimensions are more readily acknowledged as fearful than others. For example, a threat specifying the effect of one's death on loved ones might have more impact than a threat of death to oneself. Fourthly, people may fear death differently, or, for religious or other reasons, may not fear death at all. Furthermore, there may be age and gender differences in response to threat appeals using death. It is concluded that systematic research is required to determine whether and for whom death threats are effective. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications |
