Cultivating Optimism: How to Frame Your Future During a Health Challenge

Donnel A. Briley, Melanie Rudd and Jennifer Aaker
Additional contact information
Donnel A. Briley: University of Sydney
Melanie Rudd: University of Houston
Jennifer Aaker: Stanford University

Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business

Abstract: Research shows that optimism can positively impact health, but when and why people feel optimistic when confronting health challenges is less clear. Findings from six studies show that the frames people adopt when thinking about health challenges influence their optimism about overcoming those challenges, and that their culture moderates this effect. In cultures where the independent self is highly accessible, individuals adopting an initiator frame (how will I act, regardless of the situations I encounter?) were more optimistic than those adopting a responder frame (how will I react to the situations I encounter?); the converse occurred for individuals from cultures where the interdependent self is highly accessible. Moreover, mediation and moderation evidence revealed that this interactive effect of culture and frame on optimism was driven by people's ability to easily imagine the recovery process. These effects held for distinct health challenges (cancer, diabetes, flood-related illness, traumatic injury) and across single-country and cross-country samples, as well as impacted positive health outcomes and decisions ranging from anticipated energy, physical endurance, and willingness to take on more challenging physical therapy to intentions to get vaccinated, stick to a doctor recommended diet, and undertake a physically strenuous vacation.

Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-hea and nep-ias
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/gsb-cmis/gsb-cmis-download-auth/435361
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ecl:stabus:3541

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Research Papers from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().