JOHN J.
WHEATLEY
and SADAOMI OSHIKAWA*
Advertising appeals that arouse an appropriate amount of emotional tension can
be successful in achieving desired attitudinal changes. For some members of an audi-
ence the appropriate amount of emotional tension may apparently be achieved
means of negative appeals while others respond better to positive appeals.
The Relationship Between Anxiety and
and Negative Advertising Appeals
INTRODUCTION
A key element in any advertisement is the nature of
its appeal. For a few products or services the choice of
an appeal is to a large extent predetermined, but for most
either postitive or negative appeals can be used.' Adver-
tising practitioners tend overwhelmingly to prefer pos-
tive appeals. On the other hand, psychologists interested
in the general problem of communications effectiveness
have tended to take the opposite approach, and the bulk
of their work has been concerned with the effectiveness
of anxiety or fear-arousing communications on the be-
havior of those who receive them [6]. Significantly, these
behavioral scientists have compiled a considerable
amount of evidence that suggests advertisers may be
overlooking or minimizing an important method of
persuading their customers to buy and that negative
communication can be quite effective in inducing the be-
havior advocated by the communicator [2].
CONCEPTUAL AND EXPERIMENTAL
CONSIDERATIONS
Stimulus-response reinforcement theory has been
used to provide a conceptual framework for some of the
significant research conducted on communications effec-
tiveness by psychologists. Very briefly, and at the risk of
oversimplification, this approach asserts that any stim-
ulus presented to an individual is associated with a partic-
ular response if that response is followed by psycholog-
ical reinforcement, i.e., drive stimulus reduction [5].
Psychologists have shown that a negative message which
succeeds in arousing anxiety or fear creates a secondary
* John J. Wheatley is Associate Professor of Marketing,Uni-
versity of Washington. Sadaomi Oshikawa is Assistant Professor
of Marketing,University of Washington.
85
by
Positive
drive and a reduction of the fear or anxiety thus created
has been shown to constitute an effective kind of rein-
forcement [10, 11]. The significance of this theoretical
formulation from an advertising standpoint lies in the
fact that under these circumstances, learning-and con-
sequently attitudinal and behavioral change on the part
of the message recipient-can take place.
If a recipient's emotional tension is appropriately
aroused by a negative communication the person in-
volved will attempt to reduce his or her anxiety level, for
example by searching for some kind of reassurance. The
exact nature of the attempt will depend on a number of
circumstances. If, for example, psychological reinforce-
ment in the form of a recommended course of action
perceived to be reassuring is also presented as part of
the message, it may lead not only a reduction in emo-
tional tension, but to conformity to the communicator's
recommendation. The person receiving the message is
likely to rehearse silently the reassuring part of the
message and to visualize himself being relieved of the
anxiety caused by the communication [6, pp. 60-6].
Since reassuring recommendations reduce anxiety, they
are learned and tend to become habitual responses, sub-
sequently affecting attitudes and later behavior. When-
ever the subject matter of the message again comes to
attention, the recipient will tend to remember the re-
assuring recommendation unless intervening learning of
a different sort has taken place.
The degree of anxiety aroused by a particular message
will also affect the response pattern of the recipient. It
is generally agreed that a communication must, if it is to
1Negative appeals may be defined as those that warn about
an annoying, repulsive, or uncomfortable situation that might be
experienced as a result of not buying or using the advertised
product or service. Positive appeals, on the other hand, are
those that describe the useful, beneficial, or desirable conse-
quences of buying or using the advertised product or service.
Journal of Marketing Research,
Vol. VII (February1970), 85-9
86
be effective, be strong enough to arouse the recipient to
a "drive state" but not beyond that point. A moderately
strong anxiety-arousing communication is more effec-
tive in eliciting an appropriate response than one that
is stronger, in the sense of being more anxiety-arousing.
Similarly, a low level of anxiety arousal is also less ef-
fective than a moderately strong one in obtaining con-
formity to a communication's recommendation.
Individuals differ with respect to their general anxiety
level, and an individual with a pre-existing high anxiety
level subjected to an anxiety-arousing communication
may make unrelated random responses to reduce his or
her anxiety or resort to what are generally referred to as
defense mechanisms. "The principal defenses are re-
pression, projection, reaction formation, fixation and
regression. All defense mechanisms have two charac-
teristics in common: first, they deny, falsify or distort
reality; second, they operate unconsciously so that the
individual involved is unaware of what is taking place"
[3]. The development of extreme anxiety may literally
paralyze the communicatee or do no more than impress
the recipient's memory with the anxiety arousing aspect
of the communication. Strong anxiety-arousing messages
are capable of being both memorable and yet quite in-
effective in terms of modifying the recipient's behavior
in the intended manner. Such messages focus the re-
cipient's attention on the threat, while somewhat less
forceful communications focus attention on other as-
pects of the message such as the reassuring course of
action advocated by the originator of the message [8].
Only the observations made here about the effective-
ness of fear-arousing communications have been dealt
with experimentally by psychologists. Yet, a person with
an already high pre-exposure anxiety level might re-
spond better to a positive appeal than a negative appeal
because such an individual is likely to distort or shut
out the fear-arousing message, thereby preventing any
reassuring recommendation in it from reducing anxiety
levels. A reassuring positive appeal should lower the
individual's already high anxiety level from the outset
and would presumably lead to acceptance and, there-
fore, greater effectiveness from the communicator's
point of view.
Thus anxiety may produce emotional tension and ef-
fectively arouse in the recipient a sense of need which
is, of course, an essential ingredient in the persuasive
communications process. Effective communication uti-
lizing a negative appeal calls for "moderate" anxiety
arousal and emotional tension on the part of the indi-
vidual at whom the comunication is directed. Psycho-
logical reinforcement in the message, as a means of
anxiety reduction, should from a theoretical standpoint
achieve adherence to the course of action recommended.
Experimental evidence suggests that explicit assurances
in a communication can be effective in reducing anxiety
[9]. Conversely, positive appeals should be more ef-
fective in influencing highly anxious individuals. This
JOURNALOF MARKETINGRESEARCH,FEBRUARY
1970
line of reasoning, representing a speculative extension
of previous work, suggests two experimentally testable
hypotheses:
1. Moderatelystrong negative appeals are more effec-
tive than positive appeals in communicatingwith
low anxietyindividuals.
2. Moderatelystrong positive appeals are more effec-
tive than negative appeals in communicatingwith
high anxiety individuals.
EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
The first stage of the experiment involved the devel-
opment of suitable communications to serve as stimuli.
Messages in the form of advertisements by a trade
association were written by the authors with the help
of several colleagues and a copy director in a commer-
cial advertising agency. The positive and negative ap-
peals were made as much alike as possible. They both
dealt with the same subject and were approximately
equal in length. Care was taken to emphasize in the
positive copy the desirable consequences resulting from
the use of the advertised product, while the undesirable
consequences of failing to use the product were empha-
sized in the negative copy.
The copy developed in this manner was then tested
to determine whether respondents agreed that it was
positive or negative as intended and to determine the
strength of the appeal. This approach required several
copy revisions. The final draft used in the experiment
was exposed to a group of 50 students, 25 of whom
evaluated the negative and the remainder the positive
copy. The bulk of the students regarded the appeals
appropriately as moderately positive or moderately neg-
ative.
The next step involved ascertaining the pre-exposure
attitudes of 154 students in another class toward life
insurance, the subject of the advertisement. This was
done by means of six semantic differential scales. The
scales used were good-bad, useless-useful, negative-posi-
tive, wise-foolish, repelling-attracting, and approve-dis-
approve. These scales are all high in the evaluative
dimension or factor and, therefore, appropriatemeasure-
ments of the respondent's attitude toward the stimulus
[12]. The scores reported were developed by means of
a simple scale that involved assigning cardinal numbers
to the seven response choices. A value of seven was as-
signed to the favorable words, i.e., good, useful, positive,
wise, attracting, and approve. A value of four repre-
sented a neutral reaction and a value of one was as-
signed to the unfavorable side of each scale, i.e., bad,
useless, negative, foolish, repelling, and disapprove.
This evaluation was followed by a 25-minute lecture
on an unrelated subject. At the end of the lecture the
students were given the advertising copy. Half received
negative copy and half positive copy. They were asked
to read it once at their normal reading speed. This step
in the experimental procedure represents the subject's
RELATIONSHIP ANXIETY
BETWEEN AND NEGATIVE
AND POSITIVE ADVERTISING
APPEALS
Table 1
MEANATTITUDE
SHIFTAND STANDARDDEVIATIONa
Low anxiety group
Appeal Mean shift Standard
deviat ion
Positive -0.519 4.85
Negative 0.591 1.47
Sample size 49
a The low anxiety group was arbitrarily determined as consisting of experimental subjects who scored in the lower third on the
instrument used to measure subject anxiety level. The high anxiety group had scores that placed them in the upper third. Essentially
the same results as shown here were obtained when high and low anxious subjects were defined using the upper and lower quartiles
instead.
response to the experimental stimulus of the message.
The second measurement of the students' attitude to-
ward the subject of the advertisement was then taken
with the same six semantic differential scales, in differ-
ent order and with the polar positions reversed on sev-
eral of them.
Then the respondents were asked to complete Sara-
son's Lack of Protection test to measure their anxiety
levels [1]. This instrument measures the respondent's
feeling of being unprotected and unable to cope with
novel and threatening situations.2 The anxiety scores of
individuals taking the test can be used to rank indi-
viduals in terms of the extent to which they indicate
experiencing anxiety in particular circumstances (e.g.,
"As a youngster, I remember 'playing sick' in order to
get out of doing something I was afraid to do" and "I
have always found it difficult to be frank with people
when I know they won't like what I have to say.")
Anxiety scores of the subjects in this experiment were
compared with scores of other undergraduates who had
taken the same test for other purposes. No statistically
significant difference was found between mean scores
for the various groups or between anxiety levels of those
respondents who had been exposed to the positive ap-
peal and those exposed to the negative appeal. In other
words, the stimulus itself did not have a measurable
effect on the reported anxiety level of the respondents.
RESULTS OF THE EXPERIMENT
The results of the experiment are shown in Table 1.
Both the positive and negative copy brought about a
small positive attitude shift. However, when the re-
spondents were divided into low anxiety and high anxi-
ety groups, the attitude shifts that took place were
greater and in conformance with the experimental hy-
pothesis. The group in the low anxiety category ex-
2 As is often the case in trying to measure an individual's
psychological state, a number of different techniques can be
used and no one of them may be regarded as "best."The choice
of this test was essentially arbitrary and can be defended only
on the grounds that none of the other available instrumentswas
more suitable for this experiment or more likely to produce
better results.
87
High anxiety group Total group
Mean shift Standard Standard
Mean shift
deviation deviation
0.381 1.43 0.130 3.35
0.000 3.49 0.273 3.18
47 154
posed to the negative copy experienced a more favorable
attitude shift than those who were shown the positive
copy. The same was true also but in reverse for the high
anxiety subjects who responded more favorably to the
positive copy than they did toward the negative copy.
The general finding held, as might be expected, on most,
though not all of the individual semantic scales for each
group.
The results also clearly indicate that, contrary to ex-
pectations, the positive appeal had a favorable effect
on some subjects in the low anxiety group. The negative
appeal also had the same effect on the attitudes of some
individuals in the high anxiety group. One possible ex-
planation lies in the subject's perception of the stimulus:
although the copy was judged to be appropriately mod-
erately positive and moderately negative, some of the
students used to judge the copy viewed the negative
copy as positive and the positive copy as negative. A
kind of perceptual distortion whose cause is unknown
may be at work. A second possibility might involve the
existence of another non-uniformly distributed influ-
ence, such as product ownership or the respondent's
age or level of maturity, which interacts with anxiety
and the type of appeal used to produce the observed
result.
The implication of this speculation from an advertis-
ing point of view is the not-so-startling conclusion that
the type of appeal used in an advertisement is not the
only factor bringing about favorable attitude change.
It is an important component in the communications
process, but it must be admitted, conceivably not the
most important one in some circumstances.
Applying the t-test, the mean differences in attitude
change are not statistically significant at the .05 level.
However, for the low anxiety group the difference be-
tween the mean attitude change of the subjects who
were exposed to the positive appeal and the mean atti-
tude change of those who were exposed to the negative
appeal could be accounted for on the basis of chance
only 15 times in 100.
This experiment represents a replication, with certain
modifications in the procedures used, of two other at-
88
tempts to verify the same hypotheses. In the other ef-
forts the hypotheses were also confirmed, although once
again the results were not statistically significant at the
.05 confidence level [13].
The students in the experiment were certainly not
typical users of the product, although 49% did own
some life insurance in their own name. Non-owers who
might have been expected to have a greater sense of
need or what might be termed "product specific" anxi-
ety [14], apart from anxiety as a general personality
trait, responded more favorably than did insurance
owners to both types of appeals. The pre-stimulus meas-
urement of the respondents' attitudes toward life insur-
ance revealed very favorable attitudes-so favorable, in
fact, that they left little room for improvement. Had
another subject about which attitudes were more neutral
been chosen, the results might have confirmed the ex-
perimental hypotheses more convincingly. The use of
more or different semantic scales to measure attitude
change could conceivably also have helped.
On the other hand, it is probably unrealistic to ex-
pect a large attitudinal change as the result of a single
commercial message about an important and familiar
product or service [4]. The experimental design itself
may also have contributed to the smallness of the atti-
tude change. It has been pointed out that in the before-
after experimental procedure respondents may be en-
couraged to be consistent in their answers to questions
dealing with their attitudes "because having once been
forced to give an answer, their opinion tends to be
crystalized and repeated" [7].
The results are not conclusive, but they offer tentative
confirmation of the proposition that a significant pro-
portion of an advertiser's audience may be motivated
by arousing emotional tension through a negative ap-
peal to accept the course of action advocated in a mes-
sage. It suggests that opportunities probably exist for
the successful use of negative appeals in advertising. At
the very least, additional work appears justified. The
heavy reliance of most advertisers on positive appeals
may provide those who are ready to innovate by using
negative appeals with a real opportunity, since not all
members of an audience can be assumed to be suffi-
ciently motivated to respond favorably to a positive ad-
vertising appeal. Many potential customers may simply
be low anxiety individuals and/or persons who do not
feel any anxiety or sense of need for many products or
services. With the passage of time and the achievement
of higher real incomes there may be an increasing num-
ber of consumers in the latter category.
EXHIBIT A-POSITIVE COPY
When you marry and start a family, it is natural for
you to want to provide financial protection for your
loved ones. The only way for most people to make sure
their family is provided for is through a sound insurance
program.
JOURNALOF MARKETINGRESEARCH,FEBRUARY
1970
If you want to make sure that your children will re-
ceive a college education, why not let life insurance
help you? With one of the variety of life insurance plans
available today, you can be sure they will have the
money when they need it.
With a life insurance policy, you can also borrow at
a low interest rate when an unexpected emergency oc-
curs-an extra measure of security which you will enjoy
and your family will appreciate.
Life insurance can also be an important and reliable
method of saving. The proper insurance plan can guar-
antee you a pre-planned amount when the policy ma-
tures, or when you retire, or an income that will enable
you to enjoy life-long financial independence and se-
curity.
Your life insurance is more than just protection. It
is an investment: a working investment. Even if you
want a few of the things that make life more fun-a trip
to Europe, maybe a summer cottage-a life insurance
policy can help you to bring these dreams to life.
So why put it off? Life insurance can help you provide
security for the future-protection for your family, re-
tirement income for yourself, cash for emergencies; and
put more fun into your life. Won't you see your life
insurance agent today?
The Institute of Life Insurance
EXHIBIT B-NEGATIVE COPY
When you marry and start a family, it is natural for
you to want to provide financial protection for your
loved ones. As long as you live and keep your health,
you can usually provide this extremely important pro-
tection by the income your receive from your job. But
you may die young. Life insurance is the only way most
people can make sure that their family will be provided
for in the event of an early death.
Of course, nobody expects to die young. You might
say to yourself, "Other people may die young-not me,"
but it can happen to you. Death often stalks those who
appear to be strong and healthy-at an early age.
If tragedy strikes, will your family be provided for?
Will they be able to maintain a decent standard of
living? Will your wife be able to keep your home? Will
your children be able to complete their education?
Without life insurance you are passing up one of the
best methods of saving and you cannot look forward to
the important money that a policy could provide when
it matures.
Delay in starting a life insurance program is improvi-
dent. It means that you will have to pay much higher
premiums when you eventually decide to secure a policy,
if you can insure yourself at all at an older age.
The hazards of not starting your life insurance pro-
gram now are overwhelming. So why put it off and
worry? Life insurance can help you provide security for
the future-protection for your family, retirement in-
RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN AND POSITIVE
ANXIETY APPEALS
ADVERTISING
AND NEGATIVE
come for yourself and cash for emergencies. Won't you
see your life insurance agent today?
The Institute of Life Insurance
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