Marketing Risk: Emotional Appeals Can Promote the Mindless Acceptance of Risk

Emotions are routinely exploited in the marketing of risk. Emotional appeals used in advertising and propaganda support the mindless acceptance of risk, including technological risk. As a consequence, emotion is a necessary factor in the design of effective messages warning of risk. To be effective, a warning must command attention, galvanize memory, evoke emotion, contain an explicit instruction, and show consequences. As it is, effective warnings are resisted because they undermine sales. For example, risky behaviors such as using alcohol and tobacco are supported by highly effective emotional advertisements, and the so-called “warning labels” in the United States on alcohol and tobacco products are pallid and cold: offering mere advice, not effective warning. Similarly, the marketing of GM-foods and nuclear energy has been supported by soothing emotional messages that do not deny, but rather ignore, risk. We argue that it is not only morally acceptable but morally imperative to design messages that use emotion effectively to communicate genuine risks, thereby to facilitate rational decisions as to the moral acceptability of risks.