Much has been made of the dark, fear-ridden version of the United States that Donald Trump presented in his 2016 speech accepting the Republican nomination to be President of the United States. This may raise the question, do fear appeal really work?
An article by Dolores Albarracin, a professor in the Pyschology Department of my alma mater, the University of Illinois, analyzes over a hundred studies of fear appeals. She concludes that fear appeals do have a significant, albeit often small, persuasive effect. She also argues that other kinds of persuasive appeals are often more effective.
Effective fear appeals require that the audience be able to take some kind of action to reduce the danger that they perceive. In Trump's speech, his point was that he, and he alone, could reduce the dangers that he depicted.
At the same time, were the dangers that Trump depicted entirely real? The fact-checkers are already busy investigating what in his speech was real and what was not.
Fear appeals can be a risky persuasive method. No one can be afraid all the time; at some point, people do need to find rational solutions.
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