Effects of Fear-Arousing Communications and Topic Importance on Attitude Change

Summary The interaction hypothesis that higher levels of fear arousal will be relatively more effective in producing attitude change for topics of low importance and relatively less effective for topics of high importance was investigated. Undergraduate smokers and nonsmokers (N = 129 males and females) were exposed to one of three fear-arousing communications concerning smoking and cancer. High and low topic importance groups were created on the basis of (a) smoking behavior, (b) verbal reports of topic importance, and (c) interest in the topic. The latter two measures were moderately correlated with one another but neither correlated well with the behavioral measure. Posttest measures of fear level indicated that the messages induced fear but did not induce very high levels, even in the High Fear condition. The interaction hypothesis was not supported with any of the criteria of importance. Smokers evidenced more attitude change than nonsmokers. Higher levels of fear resulted in more attitude change than lower levels. The major implication of these results is that greater attention must be given to the specific definitions of concepts such as topic importance, fear levels, and attitude change in this body of research.