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Effects of symptom presentation order on perceived disease risk.

Authors :
Kwan VS
Wojcik SP
Miron-Shatz T
Votruba AM
Olivola CY
Source :
Psychological science [Psychol Sci] 2012 Apr; Vol. 23 (4), pp. 381-5. Date of Electronic Publication: 2012 Mar 05.
Publication Year :
2012

Abstract

People are quick to perceive meaningful patterns in the co-occurrence of events. We report two studies exploring the effects of streaks in symptom checklists on perceived personal disease risk. In the context of these studies, a streak is a sequence of consecutive items on a list that share the characteristic of being either general or specific. We identify a psychological mechanism underlying the effect of streaks in a list of symptoms and show that the effect of streaks on perceived risk varies with the length of the symptom list. Our findings reveal a tendency to infer meaning from streaks in medical and health decision making. Participants perceived a higher personal risk of having an illness when presented with a checklist in which common symptoms were grouped together than when presented with a checklist in which these same symptoms were separated by rare symptoms. This research demonstrates that something as arbitrary as the order in which symptoms are presented in a checklist can affect perceived risk of disease.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
1467-9280
Volume :
23
Issue :
4
Database :
MEDLINE
Journal :
Psychological science
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
22395133
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611432177