Emotion and Information Seeking

Information seeking is an important factor in coping with illness and in the learning of preventive actions. People seek information from supportive others, health care providers, and mediated sources (e.g., the Internet). Research on informational support has focused on the effects of receiving information, but knowledge about personal and situational moderators that promote or reduce information seeking is scarce. Although information seeking is associated with positive health outcomes, psychologists and health professionals know little about how personal traits and cognitive or emotional states influence this strategy. Nevertheless, previous research on the role of emotion in information processing and persuasion provides some interesting insights into how and when people seek information.

The main theoretical models in persuasion, such as the elaboration likelihood model or the heuristic-systematic model, ...