Question

- What are the types of appeal characteristics? and What factors influence the effectiveness of fear appeals in changing attitudes?

What drives an individual to achieve consistency among attitude components? What factors may reduce the apparent consistency between attitude components?

What are the components of an attitude and which strategies can be used to change each of the components of an attitude? Use examples in your response.

Answer 1

1.   There are a total of 23 types of appeal characteristics including Fear Appeal, Social appeal, personal appeal, etc. Fear appeal is influenced by a number of factors like; graphical representation, audio and so on. Graphic is the major factor which can influence the fear appeal as it can easily generate a sense of fear in any individual.
2.   Attitude of a person is highly driven by the knowledge about the specific thing. The belief and feeling of any person is also responsible for driving the consistency of attitude. There are a number of factors that reduce this consistency like a lack of need or ability, situations influences and so on.
3.   There are a number of components of attitude like; knowledge, feeling, belief and so on. Let us suppose a person has set a belief about a situation, now the attitude of that person towards the situation is entirely dependent on that belief. The only thing which can change the attitude is a strong sense of something which is unexpected.