Miles, Anne and Voorwinden, S. and Mathews, A. and Hoppitt, L.C. and Wardle, J. (2009) Cancer fear and the interpretation of ambiguous information related to cancer. Cognition & Emotion 23 (4), pp. 701-713. ISSN 0269-9931.
Abstract
We tested the hypothesis that people with a high fear of cancer would be more likely to interpret ambiguous information about cancer in a negative manner compared with people low on cancer fear. Adults (n=47) aged 50–70, who scored either high (n=16) or low (n=31) on cancer fear, took part in a laboratory-based ambiguous sentences task. Participants were presented with ambiguous cancer and social threat scenarios mixed with unambiguous neutral scenarios. Interpretations were assessed in a recognition task, by asking participants to rate disambiguated sentences in terms of how similar in meaning they were to the originals. People high on cancer fear were more likely to endorse negative interpretations of the original ambiguous cancer scenarios than were people low on cancer fear. This negative interpretation bias was specific to cancer scenarios and was not observed for the social threat scenarios.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 09 May 2013 11:32 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:03 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/6647 |
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