School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Australia.
School of Psychological Science, University of Western Australia, Australia.
Soc Sci Med. 2020 Aug;259:112790. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.112790. Epub 2020 Jan 7.
Fraudulent health claims-false or misleading claims used to promote health remedies that are untested, ineffective, and often harmful-cause extensive and persistent harm to consumers. To address this problem, novel interventions are needed that address the underlying cognitive mechanisms that render consumers susceptible to fraudulent health claims. However, there is currently no single framework of relevant psychological insights to design interventions for this purpose. The current review aims to address this gap.
An integrative theoretical review was conducted across several relevant disciplines including criminology; behavioural economics; and cognitive, health, and social psychology.
The current review presents a novel taxonomy that aims to serve as an agenda for future research to systematically design and compare interventions based on empirical evidence. Specifically, this taxonomy identifies (i) the psychological drivers that make consumers susceptible to fraudulent health claims, (ii) the psychological barriers that may prevent successful application of interventions, and (iii) proposes evidence-informed treatments to overcome those barriers.
The resulting framework integrates behavioural insights from several hitherto distinct disciplines and structures promising interventions according to five underlying psychological drivers: Visceral influence, Affect, Nescience, Misinformation, and Norms (VANMaN). The taxonomy presents an integrative and accessible theoretical framework for designing evidence-informed interventions to protect consumers from fraudulent health claims. This review has broad implications for numerous topical issues including the design and evaluation of anti-fraud campaigns, efforts to address the growing problem of health-related misinformation, and for countering the polarisation of politically sensitive health issues.
欺诈性健康声明——用于推广未经测试、无效且往往有害的健康疗法的虚假或误导性声明——对消费者造成广泛而持久的伤害。为了解决这个问题，需要新的干预措施来解决使消费者易受欺诈性健康声明影响的潜在认知机制。然而，目前还没有一个单一的相关心理洞察力框架来为此目的设计干预措施。本综述旨在填补这一空白。
对犯罪学、行为经济学以及认知、健康和社会心理学等几个相关学科进行了综合理论综述。
目前的综述提出了一个新的分类法，旨在为未来的研究提供一个议程，以便根据经验证据系统地设计和比较干预措施。具体来说，该分类法确定了（i）使消费者易受欺诈性健康声明影响的心理驱动因素，（ii）可能阻碍干预措施成功应用的心理障碍，以及（iii）提出基于证据的治疗方法来克服这些障碍。
由此产生的框架整合了来自几个迄今为止不同学科的行为洞察力，并根据五个潜在的心理驱动因素来构建有前途的干预措施：本能影响、情感、无知、错误信息和规范（VANMaN）。该分类法为设计基于证据的干预措施提供了一个综合且易于理解的理论框架，以保护消费者免受欺诈性健康声明的影响。本综述对许多热门问题具有广泛的影响，包括反欺诈活动的设计和评估、解决与健康相关的错误信息日益增多的问题的努力，以及应对政治敏感健康问题的两极化问题。
