Does the effect of ‘horror movie’ safety messaging eventually wear off, to the point where the viewer becomes desensitised? Paul Verrico and Catherine Henney look at the evidence.
For years, safety professionals have often used the ‘scary movie’ approach to deliver hard-hitting messages about safety, trying to frighten leaders and employees alike into adopting an almost submissive approach to safety compliance: ‘Obey, or face these horrific consequences’ or ‘This company wasn’t paying attention and look what happened to them.’
Sometimes hard-hitting messages are necessary. Health warnings on cigarette packets led to graphic pictures of lung cancer and heart disease. Many would undoubtedly have been put off smoking. Yet many others would argue this has had no impact on long‑addicted smokers (Pasquerear et al, 2022; Guignard et al, 2018) or young smokers (Moan and Rise, 2006) – those whose habit has become so ingrained that a nasty photo and scary words aren’t enough to help them stop (Clayton et al, 2017; Leshner et al, 2010; 2009).
As safety professionals, many of us will have seen the powerful impact safety incidents can have on organisations and employees after the event, particularly where serious injury or a fatality has occurred. The hardest lessons are often learned having paid witness to injury and loss of life. Often those incidents are used in training – a scary movie to learn lessons.
Scientific studies on threat messaging tend to suggest their effectiveness has been inconsistent
The science of safety messaging
Health and safety practitioners are often asked to help deliver messages to boards of directors, executives and senior stakeholders who may not have daily awareness of the reality of health and safety within their organisation. A meeting might include suggesting they ‘really want to scare the board/the managing director/the chief operational officer’ or ‘weave in that they can go to prison if they have an incident’.
In many respects this is an easy brief. But the reality is that it rarely achieves the desired aim – particularly if this is the only tactic used. It can be quite difficult to explain to prospective clients that it is highly unlikely anyone would, in fact, go to prison if things went wrong. GB Health and Safety Executive (HSE) enforcement statistics show that just 2% of the 185 convictions secured for health and safety offences resulted in immediate custody (HSE, 2021). In addition, a scaremongering approach usually fails to lead to the right sort of engagement and leadership that an organisation really needs.
We all agree that encouraging individuals to adopt safe behaviours is one of the most important goals of health and safety messaging. However, scientific studies on threat messaging tend to suggest ‘their effectiveness has been inconsistent’ (Nestler and Egloff, 2012).
Cognitive avoidance
The extended parallel process model (EPPM) explains when and why threat appeals designed to scare people into healthy behaviour are effective. Integral to the EPPM is that the success of a threat appeal depends upon the level of threat and the perceived efficacy of the proposed solution. The EPPM predicts that an individual will change their behaviour when a threat is relevant, meaning it is severe and applicable to the individual, and the solution is perceived to be effective. When the threat is irrelevant or the solution is ineffective, an individual is not motivated to change their behaviour. Importantly, the EPPM recognises that there will be variations in individuals’ perceptions of threats and solutions, which will affect whether or not they choose to adopt a proposed behaviour change. Therefore, two people shown a threatening health and safety message and solution may respond completely differently. We can relate this back to those health warnings on cigarette packages: social smokers in their early 20s may today perceive the threat of lung cancer and the pictures on the packet to be a sufficient risk to encourage them to change their behaviour, and that change may seem relatively easy to achieve. But heavy smokers who have smoked for decades may believe ‘the damage is already done’ and, given their lifelong habit, may not be so encouraged to give up.
This latter response is known as ‘cognitive avoidance’, where the receiver of the threat shields themselves from the emotion and uncertainty triggered by that threat. Those demonstrating high cognitive avoidance will respond to threats with tactics such as denial, disengagement, suppression, beliefs of self-invincibility or distraction. In other words, they preserve and disassociate themselves from the threat altogether – ‘It won’t happen to me.’ Those who have low cognitive avoidance are more likely to respond positively to threat appeals.
IOSH resources: How to achieve OSH cultural maturity
IOSH can work with organisations to develop a bespoke programme of activity to enhance OSH maturity, with a focus on leadership capabilities and governance using the IOSH Models of Safety.
It can support leadership teams in developing a corporate OSH culture, underpinned by risk-appropriate organisational capabilities and competencies, where leaders set the tone for a safer and healthier world of work.
Enter Nestler and Egloff
Nestler and Egloff undertook two studies that considered the interaction between the threat level of safety messaging and the effect of those threats on individuals. In their first study, carried out in 2010, they explored the effectiveness of threat appeals in health and safety messages when delivered to those who are cognitively avoidant.
The study first tested participants to measure their cognitive traits and rated them as having high or low cognitive avoidance. Participants were then provided with two safety messages from fake news reports that linked caffeine consumption to a fictitious gastrointestinal disease called ‘xyelinenteritis’ and recommended that people should reduce their caffeine intake in response to this threat. The first version of the news report was a high-threat message as it linked xyelinenteritis to cancer and stated that the participant’s age group was particularly at risk. The second version of the news report was a low-threat message and did not include links to cancer or age group vulnerability. Once the participants had read the articles they were asked to rate their attitudes on reducing their caffeine consumption.
The results showed that when participants were presented with a high-threat message, those who had low cognitive avoidance were more likely to reduce caffeine intake than those who had high cognitive avoidance. Individuals who had high cognitive avoidance had judged the high-threat appeal to be less severe than the low-threat appeal and were less likely to reduce caffeine consumption.
Importantly, the highly cognitive avoidant participants were also more responsive to the low-threat appeals than participants with low cognitive avoidance. This result can be explained by the fact that people who are highly cognitive avoidant minimise threats as a coping mechanism and consequently will not be persuaded by a threat appeal’s recommendation. Therefore, for people who are cognitively avoidant, frightening health messages are, according to this 2010 study, counter-productive. Constantly repeating the same message (‘Be safe or die’) loses impact very quickly.
New threat levels
In a subsequent study (2012), Nestler and Egloff varied not only the threat level, but also the efficacy level of the recommended action (how able the participant felt to effect a change in behaviour). This study demonstrated the effect of efficacy in health and safety messages when delivered to those who are cognitively avoidant.
Four versions of the fictitious news reports that linked caffeine consumption and an invented gastrointestinal disease were produced. Two high-threat versions linked xyelinenteritis to cancer and stated that the participant’s age group was particularly at risk, while the two low-threat messages omitted this information. The two high-efficacy versions recommended that a reduction in caffeine would result in a reduction of risk in contracting xyelinenteritis to a 15% likelihood, while the low-efficacy version recommended that even if caffeine consumption was reduced, the participant still had a 75% risk of contracting xyelinenteritis.
Results showed cognitive avoidance did not affect intention to change behaviour when the proposed action was ineffective. In low-efficacy conditions, all participants presented with a low-threat appeal were not motivated to adopt the recommended actions. When presented with a high-threat appeal, low cognitive avoidant participants engaged with the proposed solution, albeit to a lesser degree, whereas highly cognitive avoidant participants curtailed the processing of the threat and did not engage in the solution.
However, when the proposed action was effective, in high-efficacy conditions, low cognitive avoidant participants engaged with the proposed solution and were likely to change their behaviour, whereas highly cognitive avoidant participants curtailed the processing of the threat and judged the threat to be less severe. As expected, the results showed that all participants were more likely to adopt a recommended action if presented with a high-efficacy solution. However, results also showed that highly cognitive avoidant individuals will not change their behaviour, regardless of a solution’s efficacy.
Beyond scaremongering
Those who champion scare tactics as a form of safety message often believe that such appeals will be successful if they contain a serious threat but also provide an effective means of avoiding it. Nestler and Egloff’s studies demonstrate that this is incorrect as not all people will respond to such a message in the same way. Instead of giving all individuals the same threat communications, messages should be individualised.
Business leaders like to see tangible data, positive outcomes and solutions-driven approaches. The furore of negative press coverage, threat to share price and impact upon employees are all far more realistic consequences of a safety incident than prison time. An educated director is likely to know already that the HSE prosecutes few individuals but may not have thought about the wider context of a serious incident. Indeed, research on the effects of message repetition suggested an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of message repetitions and the attitude towards the message content (Reinhard et at, 2014).
Such ramifications can be explained without scaremongering, and in our experience the rise in corporate accountability lends itself to a more sensible, logical approach of setting out such messages within the realities of the current economic and regulatory climate.
Safety messaging is essential for frontline workers too. It is common to find that long-standing employees who have done the same job for many years are more resistant to change – even where this is essential to protect their own health and safety. Complacency often sets in and, alongside it, high cognitive avoidance. Again, measured conversations about potential impact, examples of positive outcomes or seeking to positively engage individuals through awards and recognition for good safety behaviour will, in our experience, have far greater impact.
Paul Verrico is global head of Eversheds Sutherland’s EHS practice; Catherine Henney
heads the Manchester H&S team
References:
Health and Safety Executive. (2021) Enforcement statistics in Great Britain, 2021. See: (accessed 25 April 2022).
Nestler S, Egloff B. (2010) When scary messages backfire: influence of dispositional cognitive avoidance on the effectiveness of threat communications. Journal of Research in Personality 44(1): 137-41. (accessed 25 April 2022).
Clayton RB, Leshner G, Bolls PD. (2017) Discard the Smoking Cues--Keep the Disgust: An Investigation of Tobacco Smokers’ Motivated Processing of Anti-tobacco Commercials. Health Communication 32(11): 1319-330.
Guignard R, Andler R, Richard JB et al. (2021) Effectiveness of ‘Mois sans tabac 2016’: A French social marketing campaign against smoking. Tobacco Induced Diseases 19: 60.
Leshner G, Bolls P, Thomas E. (2009) Scare’ em or disgust ’em: the effects of graphic health promotion messages. Health Communication 24(5): 447-58.
Leshner G, Vultee F, Bolls PD et al. (2010) When a Fear Appeal Isn't Just a Fear Appeal: The Effects of Graphic Anti-Tobacco Messages. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 54(3): 485-507.
Moan IS, Rise J. (2006) Predicting smoking reduction among adolescents using an extended version of the theory of planned behaviour. Psychology and Health 21(6): 717-38.
Nestler S, Egloff B. (2012) Interactive Effect of Dispositional Cognitive Avoidance, Magnitude of Threat, and Response Efficacy on the Persuasive Impact of Threat Communications. Journal of Individual Differences 33(2): 94-100.
Pasquereau A, Guignard R, Andler R et al.(2022) Plain packaging on tobacco products in France: Effectiveness on smokers’ attitudes one year after implementation. Tobacco induced diseases 20: 35.
