Cancer fear and the interpretation of ambiguous information related to cancer

Abstract

We tested the hypothesis that people with a high fear of cancer would be more likely to interpret ambiguous information about cancer in a negative manner compared with people low on cancer fear. Adults (n=47) aged 50–70, who scored either high (n=16) or low (n=31) on cancer fear, took part in a laboratory-based ambiguous sentences task. Participants were presented with ambiguous cancer and social threat scenarios mixed with unambiguous neutral scenarios. Interpretations were assessed in a recognition task, by asking participants to rate disambiguated sentences in terms of how similar in meaning they were to the originals. People high on cancer fear were more likely to endorse negative interpretations of the original ambiguous cancer scenarios than were people low on cancer fear. This negative interpretation bias was specific to cancer scenarios and was not observed for the social threat scenarios.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Cancer Research UK who funded this study (Grant code C8668/A5764); the work was undertaken with the support of Camden and Islington Primary Care Trusts who received a proportion of funding from the NHS Executive. The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NHS Executive. There are no conflicts of interest.

Thanks are also due to the James Wigg GP Practice, The Elizabeth Avenue Group Practice and the Keats Group Practice, who allowed us to contact their patients and invite them to participate in this research; and to Bundy Macintosh who provided the social threat scenarios.