Adolescents and Fear Appeals

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Abstract
As part of a study into ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ informative television advertisements 784 Dutch adolescents were asked to evaluate ten television advertisements about safe sex, road safety and smoking. These short films did not differ much in terms of effectiveness. Variables that play a central role in theories on fear arousal (severity, vulnerability, response and self-efficacy) also proved to be of (some) importance in this study. Almost half of the smokers showed a defensive response to the anti-smoking message (fear control), whereas a small majority indicated that they wanted to stop smoking (danger control).