scare tactic

English

Noun

scare tactic (plural scare tactics)

  1. (psychology) A type of psychological manipulation regarding a particular issue in which fear or alarm is aroused.
    • 1981 February 7, Joanne Brown, anonymous quotee, “Anti-Inauguration March Calls For Unity Of Left”, in Gay Community News, volume 8, number 28, page 3:
      I think it's a scare tactic. The lockout will get publicity and then people will be less confident about coming to future rallies.
    • 2018 January 2, Samantha D. Gottlieb, “9. The “Tragically Underused” Vaccine”, in Not Quite a Cancer Vaccine. Selling HPV and Cervical Cancer, New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, →DOI, →ISBN, page 143:
      Invoking cancer is a scare tactic, not a health education strategy. The juxtaposition in the various iterations of Gardasil advertisements of the word “cancer” and the message “you can do something” put parents in a blameworthy position. The current advertisements for Gardasil 9 hardly mention the vaccine. Instead, in these ads children blame their parents for their failure to protect them from a potentially fatal illness.
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.