Understanding the emotional and coping responses of adolescent individuals exposed to threat appeals

Social marketers continue to incorporate threat appeals into their advertising campaigns. By understanding how both type, and level of threat, as well as individuals’ emotional response impacts on their coping response, health communicators can become knowledgeable about how to generate health message acceptance. Coping responses are of interest to researchers because they have social implications, and influence whether or not an individual actually takes on a desirable or undesirable behaviour. That is, after deciding on their coping response, individuals then proceed to develop attitudes that lead to behavioural decisions. Therefore, this research provides an improved understanding of threat appeal effectiveness, through an experimental design where the relationship between ‘type of threat’, and ‘level of threat’, an individual’s emotional responses, and their subsequent coping response are examined.