Affective and cognitive responses to disease detection and health promotion behaviors.

Abstract

In this set of studies an attempt was made to distinguish between disease detection and health promotion behaviors. Disease detection behaviors were defined as behaviors designed to detect physical pathology (e.g., cholesterol check) and health promotion behaviors were defined as behaviors that may directly improve health (e.g., eating a low-fat diet). It was proposed that the decision to engage in detection behaviors is associated more with affect and that the decision to engage in promotion behaviors is associated more with cognition. Two studies were conducted to test this hypothesis. In Study 1 participants' affective and cognitive responses to five detection behaviors and five promotion behaviors were measured. Consistent with our hypothesis, detection behaviors were associated with more affective responses. Study 2 used a different procedure to measure affect and cognition and replicated the findings of Study 1. In addition, Study 2 examined how promotion and detection behaviors respond to information and emotional persuasive messages.