Audience Response to Religious Fear Appeals

This study investigated the effects of religious beliefs, social conservatism, self acceptance, sex of the listener, and level of fear appeal on an audience's subjective evaluation of and information retention from a religious speech or sermon. Subjects were 114 college students who listened ei...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Review of religious research
Authors: Ragsdale, J. Donald (Author) ; Durham, Kenneth R. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Springer 1986
In: Review of religious research
Year: 1986, Volume: 28, Issue: 1, Pages: 40-50
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Non-electronic
Description
Summary:This study investigated the effects of religious beliefs, social conservatism, self acceptance, sex of the listener, and level of fear appeal on an audience's subjective evaluation of and information retention from a religious speech or sermon. Subjects were 114 college students who listened either to a high or a low fear arousing message on the topics of crime, standards of morality, and racism. Correlations were found between each of the independent variables and between each of the independent and dependent variables. Two 2 × 2 factorial analyses of variance were performed to determine the effects of sex and level of fear appeal on subjective evaluation and information retention. It was found that a religious message using high fear appeals is evaluated more favorably than one using low fear levels. The stronger the listener's religious beliefs, the more likely this is. Highly religious subjects also were more socially conservative. Somewhat unexpectedly, women listeners retained more information from a high fear message than from a low fear one.
ISSN:2211-4866
Contains:Enthalten in: Review of religious research
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.2307/3511336