To be or not to be at risk: spontaneous reactions to risk information.

How do people spontaneously respond to health-related risk feedback? In previous studies, reactions toward risk feedback were assessed almost exclusively by predefined closed questions. In contrast, the present study examined spontaneous responses after cholesterol and blood pressure risk feedback in a real-life setting (N = 951). Most spontaneous responses were related to four types of reactions: Emotions, risk feedback valence, expectedness, and future lifestyle change. This pattern of results emerged consistently across different threat levels (low, borderline-high, high risk) and across different types of risk feedback (cholesterol, blood pressure). Importantly, three out of the four most often generated types of reactions (emotions, expectedness, and future lifestyle change) are comparably underrepresented in previous research on psychological effects of risk feedback. Moreover, the results suggest that predominantly adaptive response patterns were generated in the face of personally consequential feedback.