According to a recent study, fear-based campaigns may not be effective to promote a positive behavioural changes; vice versa, they may prompt people to take more risks. On the other hand, messages encouraging positive behaviours result in reduction of unwanted actions.

The conclusion is that positivity works better than scare campaigns.

To evoke change in behaviour, positive examples work better than fear

It’s against the common sense logic, but graphic videos of tragic consequences of risky actions tend to cause just the opposite reaction to what governments expect. Instead of making people behave in a safer manner, they actually result in participants taking riskier options.

This was a shocking conclusion that researchers from the University of Antwerp arrived to after an experimental study involving 146 students. All of them had been driving for less than 5 years.

The choice of subjects is explained by the fact that young drivers aged 15-25 are responsible for nearly half of the worldwide deaths on roads, with the toll at over 1 million victims annually. The educational programs are often based on fear-driven messages aimed to preventing road accidents, but how effective is this tactic?

Apparently, it may be doing more harm than good, if the research findings are correct.

Scary movies encourage more risks?

In the study, some participants were exposed to fear-based messages (2-dimentional or Virtual Reality videos) of driver safety intervention programs, while others were seeing safety-promoting information that depicted positive choices to save lives.

In other words, young people were either told how not to behave vs. how to behave.

After they reviewed the information, young drivers took a test where they were asked to evaluate a situation as too risky or otherwise: For instance, overtaking another car on an icy road. The students also took a risk-taking test and one that measured their emotional arousal.

• Students that viewed the scary Virtual Reality film chose to take the most risks.
• Participants that viewed the positive VR film took the least risks.
• Scientists noticed that participants watching the graphic video showed typical defensive response (they stopped paying attention quickly, disengaged, and rejected the whole message).

Many campaigns that promote safety are based on messages involving fear: campaigns against drugs, alcoholism, smoking, domestic violence, HIV, etc. However, their effectiveness may be minimal if not adverse, scientists warn. While such messages may promote awareness of the problem, they actually may be encouraging the exact behaviour they are trying to prevent.

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