Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
Faculty of Philosophy, Laboratory for Research of Individual Differences, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
Sci Rep. 2023 Aug 28;13(1):14058. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-41243-w.
People resort to various questionable health practices to preserve or regain health - they intentionally do not adhere to medical recommendations (e.g. self-medicate or modify the prescribed therapies; iNAR), or use traditional/complementary/alternative (TCAM) medicine. As retrospective reports overestimate adherence and suffer from recall and desirability bias, we tracked the variations in daily questionable health behaviors and compared them to their retrospectively reported lifetime use. We also preregistered and explored their relations to a wide set of psychological predictors - distal (personality traits and basic thinking dispositions) and proximal (different unfounded beliefs and biases grouped under the term irrational mindset). A community sample (N = 224) tracked daily engagement in iNAR and TCAM use for 14 days, resulting in 3136 data points. We observed a high rate of questionable health practices over the 14 days; daily engagement rates roughly corresponded to lifetime ones. Both iNAR and TCAM were weakly, but robustly positively related. Independent of the assessment method, an irrational mindset was the most important predictor of TCAM use. For iNAR, however, psychological predictors emerged as relevant only when assessed retrospectively. Our study offers insight into questionable health behaviors from both a within and between-person perspective and highlights the importance of their psychological roots.
人们会采用各种有问题的健康做法来保持或恢复健康——他们故意不遵守医疗建议（例如，自行用药或修改规定的治疗方法；iNAR），或者使用传统/补充/替代（TCAM）医学。由于回顾性报告高估了依从性，并受到回忆和期望偏差的影响，我们跟踪了日常有问题的健康行为的变化，并将其与回顾性报告的终生使用情况进行了比较。我们还预先注册并探讨了它们与广泛的心理预测因素的关系——远距离（人格特质和基本思维倾向）和近距离（不同的无根据的信念和偏见，统称为非理性思维模式）。一个社区样本（N=224）在 14 天内跟踪了 iNAR 和 TCAM 使用的日常参与情况，共获得了 3136 个数据点。我们观察到在 14 天内有很高的有问题的健康行为发生率；每日参与率与终生参与率大致相符。iNAR 和 TCAM 之间虽然较弱，但却存在稳健的正相关关系。无论评估方法如何，非理性思维模式都是 TCAM 使用的最重要预测因素。然而，对于 iNAR，只有在回顾性评估时，心理预测因素才会变得相关。我们的研究从个体内和个体间的角度提供了对有问题的健康行为的深入了解，并强调了它们的心理根源的重要性。
