Discussion
anxiety
MAY, VIRUS
This research evaluated the effectiveness of fear appeals in increasing intentions to adhere to COVID-19 mitigation measures. Reading a highly threatening article consistently increased COVID-related threat, indicating that even though participants had been undoubtedly exposed to considerable news about COVID, the manipulation was successful. Nevertheless, contrary to our first hypothesis, a threatening article did not generate stronger intentions to adhere to mitigation measures, across any of the studies. Reading a high efficacy article enhanced self-efficacy, but not response efficacy. Hypothesis 2 predicted that the efficacy manipulation would result in stronger intentions, but that hypothesis was not supported. The EPPM argues that threat campaigns are only effective when paired with higher efficacy. As such, hypothesis 3 expected an interaction between threat and efficacy. However, the interaction (threat × efficacy) also failed to increase intentions. We can be at least moderately confident in this conclusion that neither the threat manipulation nor the efficacy manipulation changed intentions (i.e. hypotheses 1–3 are incorrect) given that the Bayesian analyses conducted robustly supported the null hypothesis. Nevertheless, these results did consistently support hypothesis 4 in relation to COVID-related threat, but not interpretations. The highly threatening articles reliably increased COVID-related threat across studies despite failing to change intentions.These findings are consistent with Heffner et al.’s 2020 study [Unlike the more distal health threats (e.g. smoking), which have been the target of previous research, COVID-19 is a highly relevant and immediate health risk. At the time of the first pilot study, little was known about the virus and there had been an influx of threatening news, to which participants were likely exposed. Consequently, participants may have been extremely concerned about COVID-19 already. Indeed, adherence at baseline was already high in both the first pilot study (Another objective of this research was assessing the impact of fear appeals upon interpretation bias. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increased levels of anxiety, and interpretation bias was a plausible mechanism through which the threatening information could increase anxiety. In the first pilot study, we found a greater health-threat interpretation bias in the threatening group compared to the reassuring group. However, we were unable to replicate this finding and although interpretation bias did change in study 1, it was not associated with threat or adherence. It is possible that the context of our study affected the results. The first pilot study was undertaken during the middle of May, when there was more uncertainty about COVID, and restrictions were currently in place. In comparison, the following studies were conducted in November and July—when restrictions in Australia were more relaxed. This easing of restrictions, following months of low levels of community transmission, may have instilled a sense of normalcy amongst participants. In these less concerning times, the threatening information may have been less likely to impact how individuals interpreted ambiguous information. Similarly, by July and November, participants would have been exposed to more information about COVID, with which the current messages had to compete. Consistent with these explanations, the threat manipulation constituted a large effect size in the first study, whilst it only generated smaller effects in the later studies. It seems likely that a more robust threat manipulation may be needed to induce interpretation biases.