Judging risk for multiple diseases: The role of disease worry

Abstract

Risk perceptions and disease worry of 1,959 healthy adults were measured in a telephone-based survey. In the model for each of eight health conditions, people's perceived risk was related to their worry for that condition (p < .0001) and their worry for the other seven conditions (p < .001). There was also an interaction indicating that the less people were worried about a certain condition, the more their worry about the other seven conditions increased their risk perception for that condition (p < .0001). The results are important for preventing biased risk perceptions in multiple-disease contexts.