How future orientations predict healthy outcomes: Information avoidance as a potential mechanism

Abstract

This study elucidates whether information avoidance may help explain demonstrated links between future orientation and health. In an online study, college students reported their self-reported prevention and detection health behaviors and responded to a prevention and detection health message. Path analyses indicated that information avoidance mediated the relationship with the future orientations (optimism and consideration of future consequences), such that, greater and more positive future orientations were associated with less information avoidance, and less information avoidance was associated with greater self-reported health behaviors and positive responses to health information. Correlational analyses revealed that information avoidance was particularly related to health outcomes, and to a greater extent than future orientations. Our findings join a growing literature showing the importance of information avoidance for a variety of health behaviors and suggest a potential intervention target for individuals whose characteristic ways of (not) thinking about their future might keep them unaware and unhealthy.