Do medical terms and colloquial affect one’s disease risk perception?

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2017, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (5) : 1260-1265.

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PDF(510 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2017, Vol. 40 ›› Issue (5) : 1260-1265.

Do medical terms and colloquial affect one’s disease risk perception?

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Abstract

Disease Risk perception is the subjective judgment or estimate that people make about the characteristics and severity of disease risk. Accurate disease risk perception is an important predictor for medical decision and health behavior. It is harmful for preventing diseases or recovering health that people overestimate or underestimate it. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore factors affecting the disease risk perception including anchor, frame and familiarity degrees, by estimating the seriousness and prevalence rate of diseases, in order to provide advice and help to people to form accurate disease risk perception, and promote better and effective risk communication between doctors and patients. Mixed factor design was used in this experiment to explore the disease name frame (medical term and colloquial), anchor value (high and low) and familiarity degree (high and low) to disease risk perception by estimating the seriousness and prevalence rate of certain diseases in medical terms or in colloquial. 64 Subjects were random selected from university students in psychology, education and Management Science majors, age between 22-28 years old,average age 24.9. The results found that the anchoring effect was significant. The anchor value influenced significantly the disease risk perception. The estimates of the seriousness and prevalence rate of diseases in high-anchor condition were higher than those in low-anchor condition. The framing effect was significant. Diseases in medical terms condition were estimated severer than in colloquial condition. The estimates of the disease prevalence rate in medical terms condition were lower than those in colloquial condition. The familiarity degree influenced the disease risk perception. The estimates of the seriousness of diseases in low familiarity degree condition were higher than those in high familiarity degree condition; but the estimates of the prevalence rate of the diseases in low familiarity degree condition were lower than those in high familiarity degree condition. The familiarity degree and the name frame existed interaction. In high familiarity degree condition, the estimates of the seriousness of diseases in colloquial condition were lower than those in medical term condition. The estimates of the prevalence rate of the disease in high familiarity degree condition were higher than that in low familiarity degree condition. But in the low familiarity degree condition, there were no significant difference between the term and colloquial conditions in the estimates of the seriousness and prevalence rate of diseases. Further analysis with bootstrap method found that name frame could direct influence the severity estimates, or indirect influence it by the estimate of the prevalence rate of diseases. Medical terms usually led to overestimate the seriousness of the disease. But if through the estimates of the prevalence rate to revalue the seriousness of the disease, as colloquial usually led to overestimate the prevalence rate of the disease, therefore, it further led to overestimate the seriousness of the disease. The study suggested that accurate communication between doctors and patients were important in disease risk perception.

Key words

disease risk perception / medical term / colloquial / anchoring effect / framing effect

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Do medical terms and colloquial affect one’s disease risk perception?[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2017, 40(5): 1260-1265
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