ON THE VALUE OF KNOWING ONES LIKES AND DISLIKES - ATTITUDE ACCESSIBILITY, STRESS, AND HEALTH IN COLLEGE

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.