Extended Parallel Process Model of Risk Communication

Kim Witte's extended parallel process model (EPPM) of risk communication focuses on the effectiveness of fear appeals in persuasive communication efforts by suggesting that communicators must provide receivers with efficacy or the feeling they are able to achieve the desired results. Otherwise the fear aroused by the situation can lead to denial or avoidance instead of more constructive responses to lower or avoid the risk. The health risk message model posits that messages should instill a sense of threat that will motivate but not overwhelm the receiver's perception of efficacy. Overwhelming one's sense of efficacy could force receivers to shut out messages as they focus on addressing their emotions as opposed to the desired behavior modification or change.

Fear appeal messages, the basis for EPPM, are created with the intent of arousing fear by promising negative consequences for a specific behavior. For years, scholars have debated the use of fear appeals, primarily in risk and health care campaigns, with most of their discussions focusing on the effects of varying intensities of fear appeals and how they affect audience response to the messages that accompany them.

Pioneering fear appeal studies focused on the motivational aspects of fear appeals. For example, in 1953, Carl Hovland, Irving Janis, and Harold Kelley proposed that fear is a learned drive and that protective recommendations will be accepted if they reduce the fear. Researchers determined that emotional tension must be apparent in an individual before fear appeals will successfully persuade. On the other hand, it was suggested that strong fear appeals might create defensive avoidance reactions, meaning individuals need to rid themselves of the fear that certain messages leave behind. This means that, in an attempt to dispel fear, a receiver would either adopt the suggested behavior or reject the message all together.

As a result, researchers concluded that too much fear would result in one actually avoiding and resisting the message. However, in 1971, Howard Leventhal suggested that message rejection could be avoided since the “protective adaptive behavior” stems from the receiver trying to control danger or threat and is not an attempt to control fear. Attitude, intention, and behavior changes are “danger control” processes, and denial is simply a form of “fear control.” As a result, researchers claimed that fear may be reduced to denial unless the suggested action is completely effective in eliminating the danger.

Building on these ideas, Leventhal's drive paradigm suggested that while variables, such as portions of fear appeal messages, may turn fear off and on, they do not have important effects on the actual persuasion. As a result, the parallel response paradigm was proposed and focused on the cognitive processes associated with fear appeals. It argued that emotional responses such as fear, and adaptive responses like belief and behavior change, are arranged in a parallel relationship, therefore concluding that a stimulus is a source of information that is interpreted and then leads to a response.

In addition to looking at the suggested action in a fear appeal message, theorists reasoned that a fear appeal must be constructed in a way that makes it difficult for the receivers to see themselves as invulnerable to the threat. To advance this idea, researchers focused on the reassurance variable. Fear appeal messages were found to be more effective when the message recipients felt that they were at risk of experiencing the negative consequences portrayed in the message. This meant that people's attitude and behavior changes are motivated by the reassurance variable as opposed to fear.

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