Self‐Accountability Emotions and Fear Appeals: Motivating Behavior

We examine the role of high self-accountability emotions in enhancing compliance with fear appeals. In two field experiments, we find that relative to straight fear appeals (negative) or adding hope (positive), which ascribes low accountability to the self, action-facilitative coping, intentions, and behaviors (using sunscreen, eat-ing high fiber foods) are enhanced by adding guilt, regret (both negative), or chal-lenge (positive), all of which induce feelings of high self-accountability. In addition, we find that cold perceptions of high accountability are necessary but insufficient to influence actual behaviors and that the corresponding emotion is an essential driver of behaviors. An appeal used by the Partnership for a Drug FreeAmerica reads, “Smoking pot may not kill you but it will kill your mother, ” an inducement of fear and guilt. In this article, we examine the role of high self-accountability emotions, such as guilt, in enhancing compliance with fear appeal messages. Studies on emotions have generally taken a valence ap-