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. 2008 Mar;27(2):249-57.
doi: 10.1037/0278-6133.27.2.249.

Information processing and negative affect: evidence from the 2003 Health Information National Trends Survey

Ellen Burke Beckjord  1 , Lila J Finney Rutten, Neeraj K Arora, Richard P Moser, Bradford W Hesse
Affiliations

Information processing and negative affect: evidence from the 2003 Health Information National Trends Survey

Ellen Burke Beckjord et al. Health Psychol. 2008 Mar.

Abstract

Objective: Health communication can help reduce the cancer burden by increasing processing of information about health interventions. Negative affect is associated with information processing and may be a barrier to successful health communication.

Design and main outcome measures: We examined associations between negative affect and information processing at the population level. Symptoms of depression (6 items) and cancer worry (1 item) operationalized negative affect; attention to health information (5 items) and cancer information-seeking experiences (6 items) operationalized information processing.

Results: Higher cancer worry was associated with more attention to health information (p<.01) and worse cancer information-seeking experiences (p<.05). More symptoms of depression were associated with worse information-seeking experiences (p<.01), but not with attention.

Conclusions: We found population-level evidence that increased cancer worry is associated with more attention to health information, and increased cancer worry and symptoms of depression are associated with worse cancer information-seeking experiences. Results suggest that affect plays a role in health information processing, and decreasing negative affect associated with cancer communication may improve experiences seeking cancer information.

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