Write a 4-page assessment in which you examine how advertising manipulates emotions, particularly fear.
Fear is not only a powerful emotion but also a powerful motivator. Advertisers know this and use fear appeal in advertising messages as a tactic to motivate their target audience into behaving in a certain way.
Assessment Instructions
Preparation
• Search for research articles that examine how advertising appeals to our emotions, in particular, our fears.
• Watch the following three types of advertising messages. Try to watch more than one example of each type of advertising. Make notes about the overall message and tone. To make this more time efficient, you may consider watching ads on YouTube. Search for the type of ad, and then use the filter to narrow your results. For example, you can narrow the political ads results by filtering for ads from this year.
o Political advertising.
o Public health advertising.
o Commercial advertising.
Instructions
After watching the ads, complete your assessment. Include the following:
• Describe the overall tone of each type of ad. What emotion is the ad trying to arouse?
• Describe the behavior the ad is seeking to encourage.
• Apply one theory or concept to explain why appealing to fear can be highly effective.
• What social conditions foster fearfulness?
• Explain how individual perceptions and experiences perpetuate fearfulness.
