THE EFFECTS OF ANXIETY ON RESPONSE-TIMES TO DISEASE DETECTION AND HEALTH PROMOTION BEHAVIORS

It was hypothesized that increasing levels of anxiety about health iss ues would make response times to disease detections longer than respon se times to health promotion behaviors and that this effect would reve rse when anxiety about health issues was decreased In a laboratory stu dy 82 participants recruited from undergraduates and the general commu nity were randomly assigned to read information designed either to inc rease or to decrease anxiety about health. Following the anxiety manip ulation participants were required to indicate their attitude about bo th disease detection and health promotion behaviors and response times to both types of behavior were recorded. Finally, the participants' a ttitudes toward all the health behaviors were measured using 9-point s cales. The results supported the hypothesis.