9. Impact of Negative Emotions on Social Campaigns Effectiveness—Measuring Dilemmas

In the case of social campaigns, the often-used method of increasing their impact is appealing to the negative emotions of recipients. This is quite a controversial approach, because the results of some studies indicate that when the emotions are too negative (this is particularly true in case of fear), the effect may be counterproductive and lead to the emergence of defensive mechanisms in the audience. It is important, therefore, to evoke emotions of adequate intensity. Thanks to the use of cognitive neuroscience tools (electroencephalography, measurement of galvanic skin response and heart rate), the researchers can check reactions to different media messages (varying in intensity of negative emotions) which go beyond declaration of recipient and ascertain which ones are the most effective in terms of increasing awareness of the problem and the involvement of the recipient. These additional methods of measuring the effectiveness (apart from questionnaires) offer new possibilities in conducting social campaigns research. The chapter presents a scenario of the experiment aimed to check whether the relationship between the intensity of negative emotions in the media message of the social campaign and its effectiveness is consistent with the curvilinear model proposed in the literature. The study is prepared for a campaign concerning road safety.