The interest value and relevance of fear arousing communications.

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
“The two experiments reported here were designed to show that a strong fear appeal could be more convincing than a weak one when (a) the communication is low in interest value and the dramatic nature of the ‘strong’ communication makes it considerably more interesting than the ‘weak’ communication, and (b) the communication is of low relevance to the actions of the audience . . ‥ There was little opinion change with the relatively uninteresting minimal fear lecture, while the degree of opinion change produced by the more interesting strong fear lecture was inversely related to the relevance of the material to the Ss.” (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)