Health communication: The relationship of the immune system to relaxation, music, imagery and emotional affect

his study examines how relaxation, imagery and music relate to emotional affect and immune response. The theoretical premise of the study is that the immune response is not only determined by autonomic physiological processes, but can also be modulated by human behavior and/or conscious thought.;Ninety-nine undergraduate students were randomly assigned to one of five treatment groups: control, relaxation, music, imagery, imagery and music combined. There were four hypotheses presented in this study. Hypothesis 1 compares the treatment effects of the imagery only group with the no treatment control group. Hypothesis 2 tests for differences between the combined and individual treatment effects of imagery and music. Hypothesis 3 examines music only and imagery only to assess pre to post changes in immune response. Hypothesis 4 compares the treatment effects of relaxation with the no treatment control group.;The dependent variables of the study were emotional response and Salivary Immunoglobulin A (SIgA). Subjects completed self-report measures of emotional response, imagery experience and background information. The immune response was analyzed by using the method of radio immunodiffusion. T-tests and analyses of covariance (ANCOVA) were applied to test for treatment effects.;The results (T-test) show that the immune response measure in the post treatment for each experimental group was significantly higher than those in the pre treatment (p...