The effects of anxiety on response times to disease detection and health promotion behaviors

It was hypothesized that increasing levels of anxiety about health issues would make response times to disease detections longer than response times to health promotion behaviors and that this effect would reverse when anxiety about health issues was decreased. In a laboratory study 82 participants recruited from undergraduates and the general community were randomly assigned to read information designed either to increase or to decrease anxiety about health. Following the anxiety manipulation participants were required to indicate their attitude about both disease detection and health promotion behaviors and response times to both types of behavior were recorded. Finally, the participants' attitudes toward all the health behaviors were measured using 9-point scales. The results supported the hypothesis.