1-PERSONALITY TRAITS AS EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY FACTORS
Personality refers to a constellation of traits possessed by a person that define how he thinks, feels, and behaves in various situations. Traits are dimensional in that a person may possess varying degrees of a given trait.
Personality refers to a constellation of traits possessed by a person that define how he thinks, feels, and behaves in various situations. Traits are dimensional in that a person may possess varying degrees of a given trait.
Several personality traits have been linked to the proneness to experience negative emotions in response to stressors. These traits are investigated and measured by a validated quwstionnaries include:
Negative Emotionality: Suffer from irritability, depression and anxiety about one's general health in response to stressors.
They misinterpret bodily sensations as indications of serious disease, they are less likely to be satisfied with their interactions with their doctors and ersistently seeking medical reassurance or "doctor shopping”.
Trait Anxiety and Harm Avoidance: Tend to view the world as dangerous and threatening as people suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder.
Overestimation of Threat: See themselves as being vulnerable to threats. You would hear them say “Bad things are more likely to happen to me than to other people”. They are repeatedly checking the Internet for medical information and doctor reassurance.
Intolerance of Uncertainty: Have a strong desire for predictability and tend to strongly endorse statements such as "You should always look ahead to avoid surprises”.
Monitoring versus Blunting: Monitoring is characterized by collecting information and scanning for cues to health threats. Blunting involves distraction from, and minimizing of, threatening information.
Although blunting is associated with less health-related worry, they are at risk for ignoring important health-related threats and failing to take precautionary measures.
Unrealistic Optimism Bias: Strong tendency to believe that positive events are more likely to happen to themselves than to others, and that negative events are more likely to happen to other people than themselves
2- COGNITIVE- BEHAVIORAL MODELS OF HEALTH ANXIETY:
Misinterpretations of health-related stimuli: As interpreting general signs and symptoms like sweating, hot flashes, increased muscle tension as a sign of infection.
Misinterpretations of health-related stimuli: As interpreting general signs and symptoms like sweating, hot flashes, increased muscle tension as a sign of infection.
Believes about health and disease: Missinterpretation of symptoms from past experience for example: My muscle aches in the past almost always when I have a serious disease.
Focus of attention: A person focusses her attention on her breathing because she believes she might have chest infection. This selective attention increases the odds of noticing daily changes or sensation.
Adaptive and maladaptive coping: a person might consider clinics as the source of sickness rather than a source of help, another person might excessivly seek reassurance from many health care providers.
3- THE BEHAVIORAL IMMUNE SYSTEM:
Detection and avoidance of sickly others: Infections agents are too small to be directly observed. A person’s immune system is insufficient for avoiding exposure to pathogens.
Detection and avoidance of sickly others: Infections agents are too small to be directly observed. A person’s immune system is insufficient for avoiding exposure to pathogens.
It is important to use cues to detect such pathogens through noxious smell or visual cues like the presence of people sneezing or coughing.
Perceived vulnerability to disease: When considering a person’s emotional reaction during pandemics, it is not the objective risk that is important but rather the person’s perceived vulnerability to disease because perception to threat determines the person’s behavioral response.
Disgust sensitivity: Disgust-evoking stimuli related to disease, contamination or bodily products.
Pathogen and prejudice: Commonly in pandemics, contracting infection when foreign groups intermingle, in which one group introduces a disease which the other group has never encountered.
People who consider themselves vulnerable to disease are most likely to avoid foreigners and have negative attitude toward them. Perceived threat of infection is also associated with prejudice toward people with physical disability, obese people and elderly.
Health care professionals who care for patients with serious infections disease are commonly stigmatized because of their disease exposure.
Implications for naming diseases: Terms as “Swine Flu” and “Asian Flu” should be used with caution because off the important psychological implications of naming pandemics after animals, geographical regions or nationalities.
Such naming can lead to misconceptions among the public and can amplify discrimination and stigmatization during times of pandemics.
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