In early 2018, a controversial paper was published that aimed to summarize the research on fear appeals as well as the history of this research. It sparked a lively debate, and seven commentaries were published. In the rejoinder to those commentaries, the original authors sought to identify common ground and move towards optimally effective behavior change interventions. One example is the proposal to use the health communication space available on tobacco packaging, which is currently in use for warning labels that focus on threatening communication, for employing more powerful messages. Links to the papers in this debate are provided here.

• Ignoring theory and misinterpreting evidence: the false belief in fear appeals
• Misinterpreting theory and ignoring evidence: fear appeals can actually work: a comment on Kok et al. (2018)
• Pictorial cigarette pack warnings increase quitting: a comment on Kok et al.
• What constitutes evidence that fear appeals have positive effects on health behaviour? Commentary on Kok, Peters, Kessels, ten Hoor, and Ruiter (2018)
• Ignoring theory and evidence: commentary on Kok et al. (2018)
• Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water: Commentary on Kok, Peters, Kessels, ten Hoor, and Ruiter (2018)
• A (Re)defining moment for fear appeals: a comment on Kok et al. (2018)
• Investigating belief falsehood. Fear appeals do change behaviour in experimental laboratory studies. A commentary on Kok et al. (2018)
• Towards Consensus on Fear Appeals: A rejoinder to the commentaries on Kok, Peters, Kessels, ten Hoor & Ruiter (2018)
• The extensive supplemental file for "Towards consensus on fear appeals"

The Extended Parallel Process model describes how threatening communication is processed. This is a visualisation of this model:

• Sixty years of fear appeal research: Current state of the evidence
• Threatening communication: a critical re-analysis and extension of meta-analyses to determine the behaviour change potential of threatening information
• The supplementary materials for this last meta-analysis

• Eye movement responses to health messages on cigarette packages

• Threatening communication: A qualitative study of fear appeal effectiveness beliefs among intervention developers, policymakers, politicians, scientists, and advertising professionals
• The supplementary materials for this interview study

• Reactions to threatening health messages
• The supplementary materials for this experiment

• Our presentation on this project at EHPS 2012 in Prague.
• Threatening communication: diffusing the scientific evidence on fear appeal effectiveness among intervention developers, policy makers, politicians, scientists and advertising professionals (pre-publication version, only accessible until the manuscript gets published)
• The supplementary materials for the evaluation of this intervention

• Finding theory- and evidence-based alternatives to fear appeals: Intervention Mapping