Responses to messages about health behaviors: The influence of repressive coping

This study examined the impact of messages that promoted health behaviors on repressors (persons who report low levels of anxiety and a high need to appear socially desirable), high anxiety participants (persons who report high levels of anxiety and a low need to appear socially desirable), and low anxiety participants (persons who report low anxiety and a low need to appear socially desirable). It was hypothesized that repressors would be more influenced by messages encouraging health promotion behaviors than messages encouraging disease detection behaviors. Also it was hypothesized that low anxiety participants and high anxiety participants would be equally influenced by messages about both types of behavior. To test these hypotheses 40 repressors, 40 high anxiety, and 40 low anxiety participants were randomly assigned to read a message that encouraged the performance of either a disease detection or health promotion behavior. Then participants were asked to indicate their intention to perform the behavior and then were asked to recall the message. The results indicated that repressors spent less time reading the messages and recalled less of the messages about detection behaviors than messages about promotion behaviors.