How Psychosocial Context Influences Young Adults' Conception of Cancer and its Preventability

Abstract

The present work delves deeper into young adults' conceptions about cancer and its prevention, focusing on how these are affected by social proximity to cancer-diagnosed people and different content retrieval settings. To test the hypotheses an experimental study was conducted with 78 Portuguese young adults (aged 18 to 29 years old) using a 2 (Social Proximity) x 2 (Evocation Structure) design. Participants were invited to evocate not only how they characterize cancer and its contexts, but also the factors that might promote its prevention. Results reveal that age and gender impact cancer awareness, with older individuals demonstrating more socio-cognitive complexity, and male participants exhibiting higher lexical production, and more negative, regarding cancer preventability. As expected, proximity to the attitudinal object increased emotional processing, and the oriented retrieval setting resulted in higher complexity on preventability (higher production and more negative content). A series of cluster analyses revealed different profiles regarding proximity to cancer and its characteristics and preventability: Proximity - (1) Extended Family and Acquaintances, (2) Close Family, (3) No Proximal Contact, (4) Friends, Extended Family and Acquaintances; Characteristics - (1) Negative Emotions, (2) Pain, Suffering and Resilience, (3) Complexity, Physical and Mental Health; Preventability - (1) Medical Check-ups and Attention to Symptoms, (2) Lifestyle, Eating Habits and Addictive Behaviors. These findings identified distinct response profiles, underscoring the importance of tailoring health communication to address the unique experiences, knowledge levels, needs, and obstacles of this age group in public health policies and cancer prevention interventions.