Abstract
The present study investigated persuasion facilitating effects and their mediating mechanisms under irrelevant fear-arousing situations. It was hypothesized that persuasion facilitating effects produced by irrelevant fear arousal, as compared to those produced by relevant fear arousal (fear-arousing in communication), were short lived and lacking continuity. Three independent variables were used: relevance of fear to persuasion topic (relevant and irrelevant), intensity of fear arousal (high and low), and time (immediately, one week, and four weeks after persuasion). The results of this experiment showed that irrelevant fear arousal facilitated immediate persuasion effect but not delayed effect, and that relevant fear arousal facilitated both immediate and delayed effects. But the relation was not observed between irrelevant fear arousal and distraction phenomena which was hypothesized to mediate persuasion facilitating effects. We proposed that more direct measures of distraction should be used.
