Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA.
Division of Psychology, School of Applied Sciences, London South Bank University, London, UK.
J Anxiety Disord. 2018 Dec;60:11-19. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2018.09.003. Epub 2018 Oct 6.
Cyberchondria refers to the repeated use of the Internet to search for health information that leads to negative consequences. The present set of studies examined the tenability of a proposed metacognitive conceptualization of cyberchondria that includes metacognitive beliefs about health-related thoughts, beliefs about rituals, and stop signals. The contribution of those variables to cyberchondria was examined among 330 undergraduate students from a U.S. university in Study 1 and 331 U.S. community respondents in Study 2. All participants reported using the Internet to search for health information. Across both studies, metacognitive beliefs, beliefs about rituals, and stop signals shared positive bivariate associations with cyberchondria and accounted for unique variance in cyberchondria scores in multivariate analyses. Beliefs about rituals and stop signals emerged as relatively specific to cyberchondria versus health anxiety in multivariate analyses. Results provide preliminary support for a metacognitive conceptualization of cyberchondria, with extensions of the present findings discussed.
网络搜索焦虑症是指反复使用互联网搜索健康信息，导致负面后果。本研究集检验了网络搜索焦虑症的一种提出的元认知概念化的可行性，该概念化包括与健康相关的想法的元认知信念、关于仪式的信念和停止信号。在研究 1 中，对来自美国一所大学的 330 名本科生和研究 2 中的 331 名美国社区受访者进行了这些变量对网络搜索焦虑症的影响的检验。所有参与者都报告说使用互联网搜索健康信息。在两项研究中，元认知信念、关于仪式的信念和停止信号与网络搜索焦虑症呈正相关，并且在多元分析中解释了网络搜索焦虑症得分的独特差异。在多元分析中，仪式和停止信号的信念相对于健康焦虑而言，与网络搜索焦虑症更为相关。研究结果初步支持了网络搜索焦虑症的元认知概念化，并讨论了对现有发现的扩展。
