Jennifer L. Howell

Reducing Information Avoidance Through Affirmation

Although screening for medical problems can have health benefits, the potentially threatening nature of the results can lead people to avoid screening. In three studies, we examined whether affirming people’s self-worth reduces their avoidance of medical-screening feedback. Participants completed an online risk calculator for a fictitious medical condition and then were offered a choice to receive or not receive their risk feedback. Our results showed that affirmation decreased participants’ avoidance of risk feedback (Study 1) and eliminated the increased avoidance typically observed when risk feedback might obligate people to engage in undesired behavior (Study 2) and when feedback is about risk for an untreatable disease (Study 3). These findings suggest that affirmation may be an effective strategy for increasing rates of medical screening.

A survey of barriers to screening for oral cancer among rural Black Americans

Research documents a disparity between Black and White Americans in mortality for oral cancer that appears to result in part from behaviors such as lower oral cancer screening among Black Americans. We examined barriers to oral cancer screening among Black Americans.

Barriers to oral cancer screening: a focus group study of rural Black American adults

Mortality from mouth and throat cancer (MTC) is higher among Black Americans than White Americans partially because of late stage detection through screening. The disparity in mortality is particularly problematic among Black Americans living in rural areas who have limited access to preventative resources. Our study explored barriers to screening for MTC among Black Americans.

Reducing Health-Information Avoidance Through Contemplation

Despite the importance of learning about one’s health, people sometimes opt to remain ignorant. In three studies, we investigated whether prompting people to contemplate their reasons for seeking or avoiding information would reduce avoidance of personal health information. In Study 1, people were more likely to opt to learn their risk for type 2 diabetes if they had completed a motives questionnaire prior to making their decision than if they had not. In Study 2, people were more likely to opt to learn their risk for cardiovascular disease if they had first listed and rated reasons for seeking or avoiding the information than if they had not. Study 3 replicated Study 2 but also showed that contemplating reasons for avoiding versus seeking reduced avoidance of personal-risk information only when the risk condition was treatable.

Managing the Threat of Impending Implicit Attitude Feedback

People facing potentially threatening feedback sometimes opt to avoid it in an attempt to preserve a cherished self-view. In three studies, we examined whether people would adopt such a strategy in the context of the Black–White Implicit Association Test (IAT), which has the potential to reveal implicit prejudice. Study 1 demonstrated that people expect their IAT results to indicate less implicit prejudice than the results actually do, and perceive feedback from the Black–White IAT as potentially threatening. In addition, people who would rather avoid learning their results regretted receiving their feedback. In Studies 2 and 3, more participants declined to learn their IAT results when cued to expect unfavorable, rather than favorable, IAT results. Importantly, participants who received no expectation cue generally opted to receive their IAT feedback, suggesting that participants likely expect favorable IAT feedback.

Associations of spontaneous self-affirmation with health care experiences and health information seeking in a national survey of US adults

Objective: Self-affirming – such as by reflecting on one’s strengths and values – reduces defensiveness to threatening information, reduces negative effects of stereotype threat and promotes prosociality. These outcomes may promote physical health, highlighting a need to examine the role of self-affirmation in medical and health contexts. Design: Data were collected as part of the nationally representative, cross-sectional, 2013 Health Information National Trends Survey. Items were completed by 2731 respondents. Main Outcome Measures: Respondents answered questions about spontaneous self-affirmation tendencies, perceptions of providers and health care, involvement in medical appointments, health information seeking and engagement in medical research. Results: Spontaneous self-affirmation was associated with more positive perceptions of communication with one’s provider, better perceived quality of care, greater likelihood of asking questions in a medical appointment, greater information seeking for oneself and multiple indices of surrogate information seeking (i.e. seeking information for others). Four of eight significant associations remained significant when controlling for optimism. The associations of self-affirmation with aspects of the patient–provider relationship were not modified by factors likely to be associated with stereotype threat (e.g. race or BMI). Conclusion: Spontaneous self-affirmation was related to positive outcomes in health contexts. Experimental research is needed to further explore the causal nature of these associations.

Caught in the Middle: Defensive Responses to IAT Feedback Among Whites, Blacks, and Biracial Black/Whites

This study used archival data to examine how White, Black, and biracial Black/White people respond to implicit attitude feedback suggesting that they harbor racial bias that does not align with their self-reported attitudes. The results suggested that people are generally defensive in response to feedback indicating that their implicit attitudes differ from their explicit attitudes. Among monoracial White and Black individuals, this effect was particularly strong when they learned that they were implicitly more pro-White than they indicated explicitly. By contrast, biracial Black/White individuals were defensive about large discrepancies in either direction (more pro-Black or more pro-White implicit attitudes). These results pinpoint one distinct difference between monoracial and biracial populations and pave the way for future research to further explore how monoracial majority, minority, and biracial populations compare in other types of attitudes and responses to personal feedback.

Cigarette Warnings: Recall of Content as a Function of Gender, Message Context, Smoking Habits and Time

The purpose of the present study was to assess the degree to which smokers and nonsmokers can recall warning information about the hazards of smoking, as a function of message context, time and gender. Subjects were presented with printed messages, advertisements, or cigarette packs containing the four currently used warnings. Recall of the message content was measured immediately after viewing the message, as well as one week later. In general, recall of the informational content of the messages was poor. However, there were differences among the experimental conditions. Smokers recalled more information than nonsmokers, and more information was recalled from the printed messages and the cigarette packs, than from the magazine advertisements. In addition, there were differences in the percentages of information recalled from the four messages. Suggestions for changes in the message content and design are offered, based on the currently available guidelines.

Implicit prototypes predict risky sun behavior.

OBJECTIVE Despite the fact that skin cancer is highly avoidable, incidence and death rates in the United States continue to climb. The pattern is particularly problematic among young, White women, who sometimes overexpose themselves to harmful ultraviolet rays in hopes of being tan. Research has suggested that positivity toward prototypes of individuals who engage in unhealthy behavior, like tanning, influences the likelihood that an individual will personally engage in those behaviors. Although the prototype-to-behavior link is considered to operate automatically, researchers have typically relied on peoples self-reported evaluations of prototypes, which are more controlled and susceptible to self-presentational concerns. METHOD In the present research, we developed a measure of implicit prototypes and compared it with measures of explicit prototypes in predicting the safe sun behavior of 731 women. RESULTS Meta-analysis of 5 different prototypes (i.e., cool, fun, healthy, intelligent, and attractive) suggested that implicit prototypes predicted more variance in womens current behavior, planned behavior, behavioral willingness, and tanning frequency than did explicit prototypes. CONCLUSION Although some models recognize that health behavior may be based on automatic processes, they exclusively use measures of self-reported attitudes and prototypes to predict behavior. The results suggest that measuring implicit prototypes may provide important explanatory power.

The liking-similarity effect: perceptions of similarity as a function of liking.

In these two studies, we examined whether the inferences people make about likable and dislikable targets align with the predictions of balance theory. We hypothesized that people exhibit a liking-similarity effect by perceiving greater similarity with a likable person than a dislikable person. To test this hypothesis, we manipulated the likability of a target person and then assessed participants’ perceptions of similarity to that target person. In both studies, people rated likable others as more similar to themselves than dislikable others across a variety of domains (e.g., attitudes, personality characteristics, behaviors). In Study 2, individual differences in self-concept clarity, self-esteem, and preference for consistency moderated the liking-similarity effect.