Fear-Arousing and Empathy-Arousing Appeals to Help: The Pathos of Persuasion

Tested the proposition that the components of a fear appeal, which persuade people to protect themselves, are the same components that persuade them to protect others. Films showing noxious scenes of industrial whaling and films showing a pro-environmental action organization successfully saving whales from whalers were shown to 118 undergraduates divided among conditions of high and low noxiousness, high and low empathy, and high and low efficacy of coping responses. Ss completed a mood adjective checklist and a postexperiment questionnaire on their feelings about saving whales. Results show strengthened intentions to help this endangered animal species. The social psychological paradigm used to investigate attitude change was merged with a paradigm of prosocial behavior. As predicted, an empathy-arousing appeal facilitated attitude change. Three implications for promoting ecological actions are discussed: empathy-arousing appeals can be applied to mass media campaigns; the concept of response efficacy in persuasive appeals can be extended from direct, individual action to activity requiring the mediation of social organizations; and pro-environmental campaigns can be effective when the potential beneficiaries are not the ones shown, but who symbolize the many others in the same plight. (20 ref)