Perceptions of Health and Illness

These cognitive, emotional, and behavioural responses are selfregulatory in that they both impinge upon and are influenced by the individual's self concept. Thus health threats can have major effects on self-perception but also appraisals of health threat can be moderated by such factors as personality (e.g. optimism) and age. Although the main focus of this work has been on the individual, taking a psychological perspective, it is clear that social and cultural factors shape both the appraisal processes and the behaviours chosen for controlling or dealing with the situation. In the final section of their paper, Leventhal and colleagues stress the importance of understanding self-regulatory processes within the social and cultural contexts in which they occur. This is identified as a key area for future work and is consistent with the need for health psychology to move more strongly in this direction (Landrine & Klonoff, 1992).