Predicting seriousness of illness using external stress, imagery, and other cognitive mediating variables

Measures of external life stress, trait anxiety, self-concept, subjective stress and three measures of imagery were taken on 188 college students and were used to predict seriousness of illness in an attempt (1) to determine if cognitive mediating variables could significantly add to external life stress in the prediction of seriousness of illness, and (2) to determine if imagery, alone or interacted with self-concept, could add to the prediction. Using multiple linear regression, trait anxiety, a subjective feeling of stress, self-concept, visual imagery, sex, and an interaction between self-concept and emotive imagery significantly increased the variance when added to external life stress in predicting seriousness of illness. Trait anxiety, when added to external life stress, increased the variance by an amount greater than life stress alone. This adds support to the concept that the interpretations of stress, the cognitive mediating variables, are certainly important and in fact may be more important than environmental factors alone in predicting seriousness of illness.