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Attachment As Affirmation To Inhibit Health Risk Information Avoidance, Elizabeth C. Mccrary

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Previous research on information avoidance has revealed that people choose to avoid negative health information, but that this effect is interrupted by self-affirmation (Howell & Shepperd, 2013). The current study aimed to contribute to the field’s understanding of the conditions under which self-affirmation reduces information avoidance by using a unique affirmation: secure attachment figures. I hypothesized that activating a secure attachment would serve as the affirmation necessary for participants to choose to view their risk information for a fictitious enzyme deficiency. However, when given a choice, participants in both the experimental and control conditions chose to view this information. At …