Abstract

PURPOSE
The aims of this study were to develope a structural model of health insensitivity and to verify the model of health insensitivity. METHOD: There were three theoretical variables in the hypothetical model. The endogenous variable was health insensitivity which is a concept including bluntness of health risk perception and unhealthy behavior. The exogenous variables were composed of personal factors and socio-cultural factors. In personal factors, neuroticism, external health locus of control, blunting style of information-seeking, deficit of self-efficacy, knowledge deficit related to health, health-related experience, age and education were included. Whereas socio-cultural factors include perceived group size of unhealthy behavior and stereotypes of unhealthy behavior. RESULT: Personal factors and sociocultural factors were significant in explanation of the health insensitivity. Relationship between personal factors and sociocultural factors was significant, too. However, the optimistic bias as part of health insensitivity was not supported by these data. GFI, AGFI and PGFI were .95, .92, .65, respectively. Therefore, this model was verified to be a good fit to the data and parsimonious. CONCLUSION: Nursing to change unhealthy behavior has focused on personal factors rather than sociocultural factors. Based on this result, however, the sociocultural factors should be considered as well.

• Keywords: Health insensitivity; Risk perception; Optimistic bias; Unhealthy behavior