When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour
A lack of behavioural engagement in health promotion or disease prevention is a problem across many health domains. In these cases where people face a genuine danger, a reduced focus on threat and low levels of anxiety or worry are maladaptive in terms of promoting protection or prevention behaviour...
| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/26012 |
| _version_ | 1848751865303400448 |
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| author | Notebaert, L. Chrystal, J. Clarke, Patrick Holmes, E. MacLeod, C. |
| author_facet | Notebaert, L. Chrystal, J. Clarke, Patrick Holmes, E. MacLeod, C. |
| author_sort | Notebaert, L. |
| building | Curtin Institutional Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | A lack of behavioural engagement in health promotion or disease prevention is a problem across many health domains. In these cases where people face a genuine danger, a reduced focus on threat and low levels of anxiety or worry are maladaptive in terms of promoting protection or prevention behaviour. Therefore, it is possible that increasing the processing of threat will increase worry and thereby enhance engagement in adaptive behaviour. Laboratory studies have shown that cognitive bias modification (CBM) can increase or decrease anxiety and worry when increased versus decreased processing of threat is encouraged. In the current study, CBM for interpretation (CBM-I) is used to target engagement in sun protection behaviour. The goal was to investigate whether inducing a negative rather than a positive interpretation bias for physical threat information can enhance worry elicited when viewing a health campaign video (warning against melanoma skin cancer), and consequently lead to more adaptive behaviour (sun protection). Participants were successfully trained to either adopt a positive or negative interpretation bias using physical threat scenarios. However, contrary to expectations results showed that participants in the positive training condition reported higher levels of worry elicited by the melanoma video than participants in the negative training condition. Video elicited worry was, however, positively correlated with a measure of engagement in sun protection behaviour, suggesting that higher levels of worry do promote adaptive behaviour. These findings imply that more research is needed to determine under which conditions increased versus decreased processing of threat can drive adaptive worry. Various potential explanations for the current findings and suggestions for future research are discussed. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:59:31Z |
| format | Journal Article |
| id | curtin-20.500.11937-26012 |
| institution | Curtin University Malaysia |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T07:59:31Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Public Library of Science |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | curtin-20.500.11937-260122017-09-13T15:24:20Z When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour Notebaert, L. Chrystal, J. Clarke, Patrick Holmes, E. MacLeod, C. A lack of behavioural engagement in health promotion or disease prevention is a problem across many health domains. In these cases where people face a genuine danger, a reduced focus on threat and low levels of anxiety or worry are maladaptive in terms of promoting protection or prevention behaviour. Therefore, it is possible that increasing the processing of threat will increase worry and thereby enhance engagement in adaptive behaviour. Laboratory studies have shown that cognitive bias modification (CBM) can increase or decrease anxiety and worry when increased versus decreased processing of threat is encouraged. In the current study, CBM for interpretation (CBM-I) is used to target engagement in sun protection behaviour. The goal was to investigate whether inducing a negative rather than a positive interpretation bias for physical threat information can enhance worry elicited when viewing a health campaign video (warning against melanoma skin cancer), and consequently lead to more adaptive behaviour (sun protection). Participants were successfully trained to either adopt a positive or negative interpretation bias using physical threat scenarios. However, contrary to expectations results showed that participants in the positive training condition reported higher levels of worry elicited by the melanoma video than participants in the negative training condition. Video elicited worry was, however, positively correlated with a measure of engagement in sun protection behaviour, suggesting that higher levels of worry do promote adaptive behaviour. These findings imply that more research is needed to determine under which conditions increased versus decreased processing of threat can drive adaptive worry. Various potential explanations for the current findings and suggestions for future research are discussed. 2014 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/26012 10.1371/journal.pone.0085092 Public Library of Science fulltext |
| spellingShingle | Notebaert, L. Chrystal, J. Clarke, Patrick Holmes, E. MacLeod, C. When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| title | When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| title_full | When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| title_fullStr | When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| title_full_unstemmed | When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| title_short | When we should worry more: Using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| title_sort | when we should worry more: using cognitive bias modification to drive adaptive health behaviour |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/26012 |