Predictors of Health Self-Appraisal: What's Involved in Feeling Healthy?

Increased interest in the prevention of illness underscores the importance of understanding how people evaluate their health. This study investigated self-report measures of health status, medical complaints, and psychosocial factors in 455 undergraduates. After controlling for neuroticism, regression analyses indicated that positive mood, negative mood, perceived vulnerability to illness, and vitality were significant contributors to self-assessed health independent of physical symptoms and diseases. Together, psychosocial factors accounted for more variance in health assessments (R²=.44) than did disease and symptom reports alone (R²=.25; p <.01 for all betas). These results demonstrate the strong association of psychosocial states with evaluations of health and suggest that physical discomfort may play a relatively minor role in how “healthy” we feel.