The affective response to health-related information and its relationship to health anxiety: An ambulatory approach

Abstract

Affective reactions to health-related information play a central role in health anxiety. Therefore, using ambulatory assessment, we analysed the time course of negative affect in a control group (CG, n = 60) which only rated their negative affect and an experimental group (EG, n = 97) which also rated the presence of somatic symptoms (e.g., back pain). By means of mixed regression models, we observed a decline of negative affect following the symptom self-ratings in the EG and a stable affect in the CG. The decline of negative affect was not moderated by the degree of health anxiety. Our findings might indicate that evaluating one's health status leads to a general reduction of negative affect in healthy individuals. The results of the study are in line with a bidirectional symptom perception model and underline the crucial role of affect regulation in the processing of health-related information.

Keywords:

• Negative affect
• Somatic symptoms
• Health behaviour
• Emotions
• Anxiety
• Self-perception

Supplementary material

Supplementary Figure 1 is available via the “Supplementary” tab on the article's online page (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2014.930022).