Date and Time
May 2, 2007
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM

Availability
Open to the public
No RSVP required

Speaker
Tamara L. Sims - Stanford University

As vulnerable populations, such as minorities and older adults, continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, demands for healthcare are rising dramatically as well. Thus, it is increasingly imperative to better understand health related decision making processes in an effort to optimize healthcare utilization among these groups. Affect Valuation Theory (AVT) predicts that valued emotional states or ideal affect is culturally determined. Previous research has found that for individualistic cultures such as European Americans, people tend to value positive affect involving high physiological activation (e.g., excitement), whereas for collectivistic cultures such as Chinese, people tend to value positive affect involving low physiological activation (e.g., calm). Although these cultural effects have been consistently established among young adults, AVT needs further examination across the lifespan through older adulthood.

I hypothesize that AVT may help to explain racial/ethnic disparities in health behaviors, such as utilization and adherence, by examining ideal affect as motivation to either comply with or ignore health treatments. This talk will describe our current study that aims to empirically test applications of AVT as a theoretical foundation for improving the health and well-being of older adults.