Fear Is a Weak Motivator Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post September 29, 2006

This article reaffirms what we have known for some time, both from general psychological studies and clinical trials focused on decision-making:

While it’s not quite that simple and, indeed, both fear of consequences and hopes for a better outcome can be motivating in specific circumstances, the point is that the typical health-oriented public service announcement evokes doom and catastrophic outcomes if one does not abstain from drugs, alcohol, fatty foods, unprotected sex, … and the most common clinical advice about compliance is scarcely more sophisticated than adhere to treatment or else. And while those approaches successfully generate anxiety and fear, they rarely improve treatment implementation.

This “analysis of hundreds of research studies involving 47 different kinds of behaviors” indicates that enhancing confidence and poviding tools for setting and reaching goals are more effective.

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