Addressing cultural orientations in fear appeals: Promoting AIDS-protective behaviors among Mexican immigrant and African American adolescents and American and Taiwanese college students

Fear appeals threatening the individual have been shown to be powerful pers uasive devices in the cultures where they have been studied. However, most fear appeal research has been conducted with members of individualist cultu res. Individualist cultures place self-needs above group concerns, while co llectivist cultures place group needs above self-concerns. Little is known about the effectiveness of fear appeals (or other persuasive strategies) in collectivist cultures. Two studies assessed the effectiveness of AIDS-prev ention fear appeals threatening the self versus fear appeals threatening th e group (i.e., family) on members of individualist and collectivist culture s. The first study focuses on African American and Mexican immigrant junior high school youth. The second study focuses on U.S. and Taiwanese college undergraduates. The results indicated that fear appeals should address cult ural orientation (i.e., individualist versus collectivist orientation) to a chieve maximum effectiveness. The results also indicate that one cannot ass ume cultural orientation based on ethnicity.