Exposure to a severe illness prototype, perceptions of severity, and coping responses


Published: Dec 26, 2020
Keywords:
care seeking common sense model illness coping behaviours Illness prototype perceived illness severity
Evangelos C. Karademas
Christoforos Thomadakis
Abstract
The aim of this experimental study was to examine the relationship of exposure to a lung cancer illness prototype to perceptions of illness severity, illness recognition, and coping responses. Two hundred and ten students were presented with Scenarios of a person suffering from lung cancer-related symptoms. Participants were randomly assigned in two groups: half were asked to think of themselves as the patient, and half of “someone else they know”. After each Scenario, participants were asked to respond to a set of questions regarding the perceived severity of symptoms, potential coping actions, and illness recognition. Repeated Measures MANOVAs, moderation analyses, correlations, and chi-square tests were used to analyse the data. According to the results, gradual exposure to more severe symptoms was related to increased perceived illness severity, increased possibility of using an active coping plan (e.g., care seeking), and more accurate illness recognition. Perceived illness severity was related to more active coping. Still, most participants inaccurately recognized an acute disorder in the majority of Scenarios. Participants in the other-person-group reported greater possibility of using active coping. The findings provide support to several of the Common Sense Model suggestions regarding the role of illness prototypes. They also indicate that illness prototypes are flexible, dynamic constructs that vary according to the specific aspects of the condition.
Article Details
  • Section
  • RESEARCH PAPERS
Downloads
References
Anderson, J. R. (2009). Cognitive psychology and its implications (7th ed.). Worth Publishers.
Bishop, G. D., & Converse, S. A. (1986). Illness representations: A prototype approach. Health Psychology, 5, 95-114. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.5.2.95
Bishop, G.D., Briede, C., Cavazos, L., Grotzinger, R., & McMahon, S. (1987). Processing illness information: The role of disease prototypes. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 8, 21-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/019 73533.1987.9645875
Cameron, L., Durazo, A., & Rus, H.M. (2016). Illness representations. In Y. Benyamini, M. Johnston & E.C. Karademas (Eds), Assessment in Health Psychology (pp. 45-59). Hogrefe.
Cameron, L., Leventhal, E. A., & Leventhal, H. (1993). Symptom representations and affect as determinants of care seeking in a community-dwelling, adult sample population. Health Psychology, 12, 171-179. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-6133.12.3.171
Dracup, K., & Moser, D. K. (1997). Beyond sociodemographics: factors influencing the decision to seek treatment for symptoms of acute myocardial infarction. Heart & Lung, 26, 253-262. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0147-9563(97)90082-0
Eisenberg, N., & Sulik, M. J. (2012). Is self – other overlap the key to understanding empathy? Emotion Review, 4, 34-35. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073911421381
European Lung Foundation/European Respiratory Society (2016, October). Lung cancer factsheet. Available at https://www.europeanlung.org/assets/files/el/publications/lung-cancer-factsheet-gre.pdf
Halm, E.A., Mora, P., & Leventhal, H. (2006). No symptoms, no asthma. The acute episodic disease belief is associated with poor self-management among inner-city adults with persistent asthma. Chest, 129, 573-580. https://doi.org/10.1378/chest.129.3.573
Henderson, C. J., Hagger, M. S., & Orbell, S. (2007). Does priming a specific illness schema result in an additional information-processing bias for specific illness? Health Psychology, 26, 165-173. https://doi.org/10.1037/ 0278-6133.26.2.165
Henderson, C. J., Orbell, S., & Hagger, M. S. (2009). Illness schema activation and attentional bias to coping procedures. Health Psychology, 28, 101-107. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013690
Horne, R., Weinman, J., & Hankins, M. (1999). The beliefs about medicine questionnaire: The development and evaluation of a new method for assessing the cognitive representation of medication. Psychology and Health, 14, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1080/08870449908407311
Karademas, E.C., Dimitraki, G., Thomadakis, C., & Giannousi, Z. (2019). The relation of spouse illness representations to patient representations and coping behavior: A study in couples dealing with a newly diagnosed cancer. Journal of Psychosocial Oncology, 37, 145-159. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 07347332.2018.1508534
Leventhal, H., Diefenbach, M., & Leventhal, E. A. (1992). Illness cognition: Using common sense to understand treatment adherence and affect cognition treatment. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 16, 223–230. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01173486
Leventhal, H., Halm, E., Horowitz, C., Leventhal, E.A., & Ozakinci, G. (2005). Living with chronic illness: A contextualized, self–regulation approach. In S. Sutton, A. Baum & M. Johnston (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of health psychology (pp. 197-240). Sage.
Leventhal, H., Leventhal, E. A., & Breland, J. Y. (2011). Cognitive science speaks to the “common-sense” of chronic illness management. Annals of Behavioral Medicine, 41, 152–163. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-010-9246-9
Leventhal, H., Yu, J., & Leventhal, E.A. (2015). Illness behavior and care-seeking. In M.J Smelser & P.B. Baltes (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed; pp. 596-602). Elsevier.
Leventhal, H., Yu, J. S., Leventhal, E. A., & Bodnar-Deren, S. M. (2016). Cognitive mechanisms and common-sense management of cancer risk: Do patients make decisions? In M.A. Diefenbach, S. Miller-Halegoua & D.J. Bowen (Eds.), Handbook of health decision science (pp. 87-108). Springer.
Lowe, R., & Norman, P. (2017). Information processing in illness representation: Implications from an associative-learning framework. Health Psychology, 36, 280-290. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000457
O’Mahony, J. F. (1984). Knowing others through the self-influence of self-perception on perception of others: A review. Current Psychological Research & Reviews, 3, 48-62. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02686558
Orbell, S., & Henderson, C. J. (2016). Automatic effects of illness schema activation on behavioral manifestations of illness. Health Psychology, 35, 1144-1153. https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0000375
Sarafino, E. P., & Smith, T.W. (2017). Health psychology: Biopsychosocial interactions (9th Ed). Wiley.
Smeesters, D., Wheeler, S. C., & Kay, A. C. (2010). Indirect prime-to-behavior effects: The role of perceptions of the self, others, and situations in connecting primed constructs to social behavior. In M.P. Zanna (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (vol. 42; pp. 259-317). Academic Press.
Walsh, J. C., Lynch, M., Murphy, A.W., & Daly, K. (2004). Factors influencing the decision to seek treatment for symptoms of acute myocardial infarction. An evaluation of the self-regulatory model of illness behaviour. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 56, 67-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3999(03)00082-5
Weinman, J., Heijmans, M., & Figueiras, M. J. (2003). Carer perceptions of chronic illness. In L.D. Cameron & H. Leventhal (Eds.), The self-regulation of health and illness behaviour (pp. 207-219). Routledge.
World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research (2018). Diet, nutrition, physical activity and lung cancer. Retrieved March 30, 2020, from https://www.wcrf.org/dietandcancer
Most read articles by the same author(s)