Revisiting Fear Appeal theory: A Psychological Entropy Paradigm

This article expands and reinterprets prior work on fear appeals, contending that major inconsistencies in fear appeal research may arise from the assumptions of versatility, fear centrism and automatic compliance. Through the theory of psychological entropy, the authors challenge these assumptions and contend that behavioural change is driven mainly by the appeal recipient’s evaluation of conflicting goals. This evaluation, emotionally experienced as anxiety, aims at reducing psychological entropy, or the level of decisional uncertainty within an individual. By shifting the paradigm from fear arousal to anxiety and goal conflict, this research provides an interpretative framework that may help clarify the elaboration process that arises from a fear appeal targeting compulsive behaviours. Additionally, it provides implications for the design and evaluation of fear-based public service announcements.