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Psychological Factors Influencing Self-Assessments of Health: Toward an Understanding of the Mechanisms Underlying How People Rate Their Own Health

  • Original Article
  • Published:
Annals of Behavioral Medicine

Abstract

Background

Research in the past 20 years has shown that self-assessed health (SAH) is a consistent and reliable predictor of health outcomes. However, it is still unclear what factors are responsible for the association of SAH with mortality and other objective health indicators.

Purpose

This study examined the impact of trait positive affect, trait negative affect, and functional limitations (FL) on SAH cross-sectionally and longitudinally. We hypothesized that changes in SAH ratings would be mainly influenced by FL, whereas affective information would have a biasing effect on SAH ratings cross-sectionally.

Methods

We analyzed longitudinal data obtained from five successive annual interviews conducted with over 800 elderly respondents (mean age = 73 years) using latent growth curve modeling.

Results

Results revealed that SAH judgments were related to FL and to trait affects in each of the five waves (cross-sectional data), but only changes in FL were related to changes in SAH over time. These data also showed that changes in SAH were predictive of mortality above and beyond its initial levels.

Conclusions

The results suggest that the temporal trajectory of FL is a source of information that allows an individual’s SAH to predict objective health measures of both morbidity and mortality.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by Grant NIA AG03501 from the National Institute on Aging. The authors were assisted by grant NIA AG023958 during the writing of this article. We would like to thank Melissa Crouch, Susan Brownlee, and Frances Sisack for their assistance on various aspects of the research reported in this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Health, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Pablo A. Mora Ph.D., Ellen Idler Ph.D. & Howard Leventhal Ph.D.

  2. imap Research and CHS International, New York, NY, USA

    Marco D. DiBonaventura Ph.D.

  3. Department of Sociology, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Ellen Idler Ph.D.

  4. Department of Medicine, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Elaine A. Leventhal M.D., Ph.D.

  5. Department of Psychology, Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, NJ, USA

    Howard Leventhal Ph.D.

  6. Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington, Box 19528, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA

    Pablo A. Mora Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Pablo A. Mora Ph.D.
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  2. Marco D. DiBonaventura Ph.D.
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  3. Ellen Idler Ph.D.
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  4. Elaine A. Leventhal M.D., Ph.D.
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  5. Howard Leventhal Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Pablo A. Mora Ph.D..

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Mora, P.A., DiBonaventura, M.D., Idler, E. et al. Psychological Factors Influencing Self-Assessments of Health: Toward an Understanding of the Mechanisms Underlying How People Rate Their Own Health. ann. behav. med. 36, 292–303 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-008-9065-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12160-008-9065-4

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