ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns medical care-seeking and adjustment to cardiac disease. Like the other chapters in the present volume, this one conceptualizes humans as active problem-solvers who try to make sense of changes in their somatic states. This ongoing adaptive process involves peoples’ naive theories or common-sense beliefs about symptoms and illness, appraisals of current states and possible action plans, and sociocultural influences (Leventhal et al., 2001). Our topic is distinctive, however, in two ways. First, we focus on cardiovascular disease as the health threat, both in the initial symptom phase and also during recovery. Second, we are concerned with how common-sense beliefs and performance standards regarding gender influence this self-regulatory process. Although gender stereotypes may also have import for other physical conditions (see Martin and Lemos, 2002), a special connection exists between gender stereotypes and heart disease which influences the meaning that people give to cardiac symptoms and the activities they pursue as they adjust to coronary heart disease (CHD). Before considering this special connection, we briefly discuss two general models of self-regulation of health threats to place our work in context. Earlier chapters in this volume describe particular models of self-regulation in greater detail.
