Emotions and health

Abstract

Aims: This symposium will demonstrate the impact of emotions on health and wellbeing. We will present emotion research from 4 key areas of health psychology: biological processes, mental health, healthy-living and behaviour change. The impact of emotions in promoting and preventing health and wellbeing will be discussed. Finally, this diverse research will be integrated to create an overview of the impact of emotions on health and wellbeing. Rationale: Although the impact of social-cognitive factors on health has been comprehensively assessed in the health psychology literature, theory and research on emotional factors is somewhat limited by comparison. This is despite the fact that emotions are central to numerous key areas of health psychology, ranging from biological processes to behaviour-change interventions. Therefore, this symposium will combine current research, from different areas of health psychology, on the growing topic of emotions and health. Summary: This symposium will present and integrate emotion research from key areas of health psychology. First, we will discuss emotion and health from the biological approach by presenting research assessing whether cortisol responses to laboratory stressors are associated with suicide ideation and attempt. Following this, we will focus on the interface between health and clinical psychology to discuss how an individual’s response to emotional triggers is associated with suicidal behaviour. Next, we will discuss the role of social identity on emotions and wellbeing. We will then explore the impact of emotions on healthy living by assessing the extent to which future orientated emotions promote and deter healthy eating, testicular self-examination and breastfeeding. We will then discuss the effectiveness of future orientated emotions (i.e., anticipated regret) in behaviour-change interventions using studies on organ donation, and colorectal and breast cancer screening. Finally, our discussant will integrate this research and provide an overview into the variety of ways emotions influence health and wellbeing.