Health Status, Perceptions of Risk, and Prevention Interest for Health and Nonhealth Problems

Healthy and acutely ill college students indicated their risk compared to their peers for 10 health and nonhealth problems. Participants as a whole showed clear evidence of optimistic bias. However, whereas healthy participants showed an equal tendency to be biased optimistically for health and nonhealth problems, ill participants felt significantly more vulnerable to future health relative to nonhealth problems. This was the case even though the future health problems were objectively unrelated to their current illnesses. Perceptions of the preventability of the health and nonhealth problems paralleled the comparative risk judgments. Finally, those who were ill expressed relatively little interest in receiving prevention information. Possible mechanisms and implications are discussed.