[Fear appealing health communication and coping style]

The purpose of the reported study was to investigate how people respond to social advertisements which differ in topic and in the extent of fear appeal given their typical coping strategy. This is a topical issue as it has practical relevance to the design of persuasive communication in the service of health behavior, based on the relation between persuasion and personality. For a theoretical frame we used two cognitive evaluating models: Kim Witte's Extended Parallel Process Model and Endler and Parker's conception about different coping styles.

Online questionnaire was applied in the study. The sample consisted of 140 young adults. Every respondent perceived two fear appealing social advertisements and filled out Witte, McKeon, Cameron and Berkowitz' Risk Behavior Diagnosis Scale to assess health communications. Finally, they answered the items of Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations by Endler and Parker.

Based on the results of the applied repeated measures ANOVA, we found that the link between coping mechanism and responses of adverts is neither linear, nor is general.

A general consequence cannot be drawn regarding the relationship of constructs, but it seems that the relationship between the typical coping strategy and the reaction to the advertisements moderated or mediated by the presented topic of fear appealing messages.