Self-Construal and Concerns Elicited by Imagined and Real Health Problems

In 2 studies, we examined the relationship between self-construal and illness-related concerns. In Study 1, participants imagined themselves experiencing a health problem described in a scenario and answered closed-ended questions about the concerns that this situation would likely elicit. The experience of social illness concerns was predicted by collective self-construal, and the experience of personal illness concerns tended to be predicted by endorsement of individual self-construal. In Study 2, participants recalled a past health problem and related consequences, which were content-coded. Collective self-construal predicted the extent to which people mentioned issues related to others in their free-recall illness descriptions and the number of other-related consequences that were generated when specifically asked about them.