Rh. Fazio et Mc. Powell, ON THE VALUE OF KNOWING ONES LIKES AND DISLIKES - ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY, STRESS, AND HEALTH IN COLLEGE, Psychological science, 8(6), 1997, pp. 430-436
On the bases of laboratory research indicating that accessible attitud
es ease decision making, we hypothesized that freshmen who enter colle
ge knowing their likes and dislikes regarding academically relevant is
sues may experience better health in this new life setting. To test th
is hypothesis we conducted a prospective study in which students compl
eted self-report inventories of negative life events and mental and ph
ysical health at two points in time. The accessibility of attitudes to
ward academically relevant issues was assessed in the initial session.
Regression analyses revealed three-way interactions between attitude
accessibility, stress (as indexed by the number of negative life event
s), and initial health status when predicting health scores at Time 2.
For students with relatively good initial health, the generally posit
ive relation between stress and illness was buffered by the possession
of accessible attitudes. For students with relatively poor initial he
alth, recovery was generally greater among those experiencing less str
ess, especially as attitude accessibility increased.