Lecture 2. Cyberchondria

Question 1

What is Cyberchondria?

Answer 1

people who use the Internet for health or health care.
The excessive use of internet health sites to fuel health anxiety.
Excessive or repeated health-related searches on the Internet that are distressing or anxiety-provoking.

Question 2

What are the positive sides of online health information (4) and the bad side (3)

Answer 2

• Online self- diagnosis: not only seeking information but already diagnosing themselves.
• The urge to see the doctors: people are not open for the opinion of the doctor. They just came in to have the pill
• Some people are self-treating, confident to diagnose and treat themselves.
• doctor and patient can talk to each other on the same level - access to the Internet means access to health-information.
• empowering the patient
• Raising knowledge about specific diseases - how to treat themselves
• You can learn a lot about you illness
• Support from social groups

Question 3

What characterize Cyberchondria?

Answer 3

1. health anxiety

2. Hypochondria

Question 4

What is this self-maintaining problem? (5 steps)

Answer 4

1. Attentional bias to bodily symptoms
2. Catastrophic interpretation and fear of having serious illness
3. Intolerance of uncertainty
4. Safety-seeking behavior
5. Perceptual biases:
   A. Attentional bias towards catastrophic information
   B. Tendency to ignore disconfirming information
   so safety seeking behavior can lead to A or B behaviour.

Question 5

What was the results of Cyberchondria: Online searches

White & Horvitz, 2009 (Microsoft): Study 1?

Answer 5

online health searches are most of the time catastrophic. Evidence: co-occurrence: you search for two words. Symptoms were paired with catastrophic interpretations/ explanations, but also combined with non catastrophic.

Question 6

What was the results of Cyberchondria: Online searches

White & Horvitz, 2009 (Microsoft): Study 2?

Answer 6

if you search for headache and click on a website, people go back to the search engine and type headache and brain tumor and then only tumor treatments after visiting.
⅓ escalated and went catastrophic. Things escalated quite often, likeliness that you have a catastrophic illness is low.

Question 7

What was the results of the study of Baumgartner & Hartmann (2011) to determine influence of health anxiety the amount of online health information search and the consequences of this?

Answer 7

more health anxious people are going nore online health information seeking, and they post more on health related on forums.

→ The more health anxious you’ll get, the more likely you will get the feeling of frightened after your health information search - no significant evidence for feeling relieved or reassured- only negative aspects.

Question 8

What did Baumgartner & Hartmann (2011) in Study 2 found? about trustworthy websites

Answer 8

• it does not matter if you are not health anxious, it does not matter if it is low or high trustworthy.
• health anxious people: more worried by high trustworthy information
  they take the the high trustworthy information more serious and get more worried. Even Though it should help people to get less worried.