The Role of Emotion Reactivity in Health Anxiety.
College students who feel emotions strongly also worry more about being sick.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Laposa et al. (2017) asked college students to fill out two quick surveys. One measured how big and long-lasting their emotions feel. The other asked how much they worry about being sick.
The team wanted to know if people who feel emotions more strongly also fret more about their health.
What they found
Students who scored high on emotion reactivity also scored a bit higher on health-anxiety scales. The link was small but real.
In plain words, kids who get really worked up about small things also imagine they are sicker than they are.
How this fits with other research
Adams et al. (2021) looked at alexithymia—trouble naming feelings—in children with and without autism. They also found that emotion quirks shape daily life, but in social skills instead of health fears.
Fernández-Rodríguez et al. (2023) tested three adult anxiety treatments. Their winning approach, Behavioral Activation, cut anxiety by getting people moving, not by talking about feelings. That seems opposite to M et al., yet both point to emotion habits as levers for change.
Feinstein et al. (1988) built the first mood scale for kids with developmental delays. Like M et al., they showed we can turn inner storms into numbers we can track.
Why it matters
If you serve anxious clients, add a one-page emotion-reactivity screener. High scores warn you the person may also amplify body sensations. Pair your normal exposure plan with simple mood-labeling lessons or activation homework to calm both the feeling and the fear.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Hand the emotion-reactivity survey to your next anxious client and discuss one coping plan for high scores.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Emotion reactivity, defined as heightened sensitivity, intensity, and persistence of emotional states, has been shown to contribute to the exacerbation of anxiety. However, the association between emotion reactivity and health anxiety has yet to be examined. The aim of the present investigation was to examine the unique predictive ability of emotion reactivity in terms of health anxiety in a sample of medically healthy undergraduates ( n = 194; 59.3% female, Mage = 19.42, SD = 1.51, range = 18-26 years; 84.0% Caucasian). Findings indicated that, after controlling for the effects of gender, age, and anxiety sensitivity, greater emotion reactivity significantly predicted greater overall health anxiety (3.1% variance), as well as higher levels of affective (4.1% unique variance) and behavioral (4.8% unique variance) components. Findings suggest that experiencing emotions more frequently, intensely, and for longer durations of time prior to returning to baseline are associated with greater health preoccupations.
Behavior modification, 2017 · doi:10.1177/0145445517719398