Effects of online health-related threat exposure: Implications for digital information-seeking behaviors, risk perception, and cognitive efficiency
Creators: name: Barnwell, Patrick Vincent
Publisher: name: No Publisher Supplied
Year: 2024

description: The Internet has become a leading technology in the mass propagation of innumerable forms of health-related information. To make sense of and benefit from all this information, individuals would have to ceaselessly attend to various media sources and forms of messaging, parse and cognitively manage the relevant content, and decide how to react in the most efficacious manner. While the experience of navigating this intricate, disconcerting, and often threat-laden health-related media ecosystem can seem overwhelming for many, the potential consequences of such exposures have received scant attention in the literature. Thus, the aims of the studies delineated in this work were to fill a critical gap in our understanding of how exposure to potentially threatening health-related information (THRI) may influence subsequent cognitive processes, behaviors, and perceptions, and determine whether aspects of those effects are meaningfully related to a health-relevant individual difference. Study 1 examined the extent to which exposure to a threatening communication about heart disease via a novel mock website impacted digital information-seeking behaviors, objectively measured cognitive efficiency, self-reported workload, and perceived risk in a college student population. Consistent with our hypothesis, exposure to THRI resulted in a slight reduction in working memory performance compared to the non-threatening health-related information (N-THRI) condition. Similarly, participants exposed to THRI reported higher perceived risk of experiencing a heart attack compared to those in the N-THRI condition. However, exposure to THRI did not meaningfully increase self-reported workload compared to the N-THRI condition. No differences were observed in webpage click count, total time spent on the webpage, or clickstream data between the THRI and N-THRI conditions. Study 2 expanded on the initial study by (1) incorporating a visual modification to the mock website and by (2) investigating individual differences in need for cognition. Contrary to our first hypothesis, those in the low-threat health-related information (L-THRI) condition reported slightly higher perceived risk compared to those in the high-threat health-related information (H-THRI) condition. Consistent with our second hypothesis, need for cognition was positively associated with click count and total time spent on the webpage. Support was not found for our third hypothesis that the effect of threatening information exposure on attitudes and intentions would be stronger among individuals reporting greater need for cognition. Analyses of exploratory questions related to need for cognition, threat, and fear control suggested that need for cognition was negatively associated with self-reported trait information avoidance, however level of threat was not. Interestingly, need for cognition and level of threat were meaningfully associated with backlash, as was the interaction of need for cognition and threat level. Simple effects were observed for threat level at the mean and at one standard deviation below the mean for need for cognition, suggesting that average and below-average levels of need for cognition are associated with a greater effect of threatening information on backlash. Similar to Study 1, no meaningful differences in click count, duration spent on the webpage, or clickstream data were observed between the L-THRI and H-THRI conditions. Taken together, these studies bridge a gap in the current understanding of how exposure to threatening digital health-related media may alter individuals’ behaviors, perceptions and coping tendencies, as well as their cognitive performance. The findings have potential implications related to an individual’s ability to attend to and interact with health-related content, as well as mechanisms underlying critical health decision-making when encountering threatening information. Furthermore, the results can be used to inform the design and dissemination of digital health communication programs and public health campaigns targeting disease prevention and/or behavior change, especially those with a focus on health-promoting behaviors in particularly vulnerable populations. As such, prioritizing the consideration of both health information content and the cognitive characteristics of the target audience may prove to be an especially fruitful strategy when developing essential digital health interventions and public health messaging.