Mapping the Folk Concept of Health
Abstract
Health is widely treated as multidimensional, yet little is known about how these dimensions are structured in lay thinking or how this structure guides health-related judgments. We used a conceptual scaling approach to derive participant-specific conceptual maps positioning the term unhealthy relative to three clusters reflecting Disease, Lifestyle, and Functional Ability aspects of health. Participants' conceptual understanding of unhealthy was most closely aligned with a Lifestyle interpretation of health. We also observed substantial inter-individual differences in the degree to which participants' understanding of health was pluralistic. Alignment in participants' conceptual maps predicted how they applied the concept in a subsequent vignette task, suggesting that the structure of lay concepts constrains concept application. These findings may inform psychological theories of health, philosophical debates about its nature, and have implications for effective health communication.