Lecture 6 Flashcards
What is the protection motivation theory?
Idea of leveraging fear to influence behavior, emphasizing the use of scare tactics to promote change.
Commonly employed to convey messages by instilling fear about potential consequences if a desired behavior is not adopted for self-protection.
What are fear appeals?
R.W. Rogers was increasingly interested in FEAR APPEALS
How does fear persuade us to act
• Rogers discovered that if you create enough of a high threat you will get the message to come across
Fear appeals include creating a sense of high threat to get a message across
Overall what is the goal of the behavior in protection motivation theory? When is this theory applied? How?
Overall the behaviour is performed to protect yourself from the threat
Population level intervention it is not really common for individual intervention. Ex. We use ads about how smoking is bad for you.
Usually used in ad
Usually a common theory applied if the behaviour is prevention
What is the difference between threat appraisal and coping appraisal?
Threat appraisal: perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, fear
Coping appraisal: perceived response efficacy, perceived response-cost, perceived self-efficacy
How do you cope with threat?
Based on your threat appraisal you will decide how to cope
you can avoid the threat, deny it is there, think about the behaviours you need to do
Ex. Avoidance, denial, fatalism, wishful thinking, hopelessness
Can be affected by threat appraisal and coping appraisal as well as MALADAPTIVE COPING RESPONSE
What is the pathway to threat protective behaviour?
Threat appraisal + coping appraisal ==> protection motivation ==> threat protective behaviour
What do you do in threat appraisal compared to coping appraisal?
Threat appraisal:
You are apprising how threatening the situation is.
The threat needs to be convincing
How susceptible are you? How severe is it to you? Are you fearful of the threat?
Coping appraisal
You also appraise (judge) your ability to cope
Self-efficacy plays a role here too!
What is protection motivation? Main point.
Threat + Coping Appraisal = Protection motivation
Protection motivationThis is simply the INTENTION to manage the threat, the actual coping method is how you will do it
When does maladaptive coping response occur with the protection motivation theory?
It is possible that you may choose to have a maladaptive coping response for many reasons
Coping response in general will be a result of internal and external factors, and those could result in maladaptive coping
This is when the threat appraisal is higher coping appraisal. If someone feels too threatened this theory will backfire, especially if they have low self efficacy.
What do we need to make the protection motivation theory work?
Threats will only work to change behaviour if you believe in their severity AND feel you have the self-efficacy to cope
What could happen if you push a threat on someone and their self- efficacy to cope is low?
Backfire and stigma.
If the person feels like they can’t get over the bad behaviour then they could continue doing the negative behaviour that gave them good feelings but they do it while scared.
What is the difference between threat appraisal and coping appraisal?
What is threat appraisal?
Your thoughts on how dangerous an action or threat is for you
happens first, you deciding if this thing is threating, are you actually scared of it, how much affect it has on you
What is coping appraisal?
Your thoughts/confidence on your ability to deal with the action or threat
When would you positive vs maladaptive coping?
Positive: if the appraisals add up, you feel like you can cope then you will be able to change your bad behavior
Maladaptive coping: if appraisals don’t add up, you don’t feel like you can cope with the threat and you continue the bad behaviour
According to protection motivation theory, why do you ultimately perform a behavior?
Because you are scared of the outcome that will occur if you don’t do the behavior
What is the goal of the protection motivation theory?
Elicit an emotional response
• This theory believes you can strengthen the effectiveness if you can increase the relatability with people in the video and eliciting an emotional response
• Fear is often memorable
