A Meta-Analytic Review of Fear Appeals: a Terror Management Perspective

The dominant paradigm guiding fear appeal research asserts that differences in level of fear lead to differences in the persuasiveness of a message. However, Terror Management Theory (TMT) suggests that fear appeals that make mortality salient may result in rejection of messages inconsistent with recipients’ cultural worldviews. As such, approaches grounded in the level-of-fear paradigm may under-predict the conditions under which fear appeals will be rejected. Drawing on TMT, this meta-analysis tests the hypothesis that when messages conflict with cultural worldviews, fear appeals that threaten death will be negatively related to message acceptance and positively related to message rejection.



Citation:

David M. Hunt, Stephanie Geiger-Oneto, and Omar Shehryar (2009) ,"A Meta-Analytic Review of Fear Appeals: a Terror Management Perspective", in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36, eds. Ann L. McGill and Sharon Shavitt, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 1002-1002.

Authors

David M. Hunt, University of Wyoming, USA
Stephanie Geiger-Oneto, University of Wyoming, USA
Omar Shehryar, Montana State University, USA



Volume

NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 36 | 2009



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