CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON SYMPTOM MEMORY AND EXTENT OF CONCERN ABOUT NEGATIVE LIFE EVENTS: THE ROLES OF MOOD, DISPOSITIONAL OPTIMISM, AND PRIVATE BODY CONSCIOUSNESS.
Contributors: University of Wisconsin--Madison.
Published: 1986
Number of pages: 177
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: The process of health monitoring was explored by examining the impact of mood, private body consciousness, and dispositional optimism on symptom memory and worry about negative life events including illness. Two studies are reported. In the first, mood induction procedures designed to differentiate anxious from depressed mood were developed. In study two, 100 subjects were randomly assigned to one of four mood induction procedures (neutral, happy, anxious, depressed) or to a health information condition.

Mood had no impact on symptom memories; however, subjects in the happy mood condition reported significantly less worry about infectious diseases, non-infectious diseases, and non-illness-related negative life events than subjects in the neutral group. Providing information about susceptibility to infectious diseases, only affected ratings within that particular category of negative life events. These findings support the idea that risk information is processed with respect to a particular category of events, while the influence of affect extends across many categories.

Private body consciousness was a significant predictor of all dependent measures; higher levels were associated with reports of more symptoms, and increased worry about infectious disease, non-infectious disease, and non-illness-related negative life events. Thus, private body consciousness may be an indicator of the more general concept of vigilance, rather than of awareness of specific internal state.

When a subsample of subjects who had responded most strongly to the mood manipulations was analyzed, findings were very similar. Once again, a happy mood was associated with less worry about negative life events including illness although the effects were weaker. In the subsample, mood did influence symptom memory with depressed subjects reporting that they had experienced significantly more symptoms than those in a neutral mood. Overall, findings from the study suggest that mood and private body consciousness should be considered in models of health monitoring and health behavior.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-01, Section: B, page: 0090.

Thesis (PH.D.)--THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON, 1986.

School code: 0262.