EFFECTS OF MESSAGE ANXIETY ON DISEASE DETECTION AND HEALTH PROMOTION BEHAVIORS

Research examining the effects of anxiety or fear appeals on health at titudes has produced inconsistent findings. In this article it was pro posed that anxiety messages would be differentially effective with dif ferent types of health-related behavior. specifically, it was hypothes ized that messages that produce high levels of anxiety would be more e ffective with health promotion behaviors than with disease detection b ehaviors, and that this effect would reverse with messages that produc e low levels of anxiety. To test this hypothesis the participants rece ived either high- or low-anxiety messages promoting the performance of either health promotion or disease detection behaviors. Then particip ants were required to indicate their agreement with the message, their attitudes about the behavior, and their intentions to perform the beh avior. The results indicated that the participants responded more posi tively to high-anxiety messages about health promotion behaviors than about disease detection behaviors.