Ethics vs. Effectiveness with fear appeal in Public service announcements
Recently, within modern advertising, the use of emotional appeal has been an issue of growing interest in both the advertising industry as well as the consumer public. Questions have arisen regarding the reason for its use and its ethical boundaries. Playing on the emotions of the general consumer public through advertising is considered by many to be very unethical. Furthermore, the advertising industry has started a trend that involves playing on the emotions of the consumer, specifically the emotion of fear. Obviously, in an effort to try and sell a certain product, it would have to be considered at least somewhat unethical to use consumer emotion as a means to sell that product. However, there is another form of advertising that has noticed the effects of emotional appeal, and now it too has followed suit. This other branch is known as the "Public Service Announcement." Public Service Announcements, or PSAs are not for profit messages for the benefit of the gene!ral public. The purpose of individual PSAs can range from an anti-drug c
Characteristics of Portrayed Emotions in Commercials. " In comparing this idea to the chosen PSA, the desirable practice would be wearing your seat belt as it is associated with the avoidance of the negative consequence of serious injury or death. However, in the case of saving lives during a Public Service Announcements, it could be possible that though it too may be unethical, there is no scientific way to prove the ethics behind it. If man recognized death as a serious issue, it turn, wearing his seat belt, this PSA would be considered successful. Negative and Positive Television Messages. As he showers, he thinks about his evening becoming increasingly apprehensive: "Wow, what a great time. Results from their experiment showed greater memory when experienced emotional flow was high and experienced emotions were intense (Kamp 1995). " By taking the opposite stance, it can be assumed that if the notion of death coming soon could be relayed unto the listener, he would then care. Also, with figuring in fatalities and how they could be prevented based on the fear appeal behind the message, I will ask you, would you rather be scared or would you rather be dead? I conclude that in this particular situation of a PSA created to save your life as well as some one else's, it should be allowed and considered credible to use fear appeal to change the action of the audience. " The article stated that some people thought the campaign was to timid and for those who wished to have more information of subject matter, information would be available at the local level. However, there is, as has been shown, hard scientific evidence that proves the effectiveness in the use of fear appeal and memory cognition and response. In another effort to target sexually active young adults, a campaign was released that was called the "The Mourning After (Key 1996).
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