Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA.
Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2024 Aug 26;9(1):51. doi: 10.1186/s41235-024-00577-3.
People are inundated with popular press reports about medical research concerning what is healthy, get advice from doctors, and hear personal anecdotes. How do people integrate conflicting anecdotal and statistical information when making medical decisions? In four experiments (N = 4126), we tested how people use conflicting information to judge the efficacy of artificial and real medical treatments. Participants read an anecdote from someone in a clinical trial, or who had undergone a medical treatment previously, for whom the medical treatment was ineffective. We found that reading anecdotes for either artificial or real medical treatments shifted participants' beliefs about the efficacy of a medical treatment. We observed this result even when the anecdote was uninformative, was paired with an icon array, or when participants were provided with thorough medical decision aids about reproductive health procedures. Our findings highlight the pervasive effect of anecdotes on medical decision making.
人们被大量关于医学研究的大众媒体报道所淹没，这些报道涉及健康相关的内容，他们会从医生那里获得建议，并听取个人的轶事。当人们做出医疗决策时，他们如何整合相互矛盾的轶事和统计信息？在四项实验中（N=4126），我们测试了人们如何使用相互矛盾的信息来判断人工和真实医疗的疗效。参与者阅读了临床试验中的某个人或之前接受过某种医疗的人的轶事，而该医疗对他们无效。我们发现，阅读人工或真实医疗的轶事会改变参与者对医疗效果的看法。即使轶事没有提供有用的信息，或者与图标数组配对，或者当参与者获得关于生殖健康程序的详细医疗决策辅助工具时，我们也观察到了这一结果。我们的研究结果强调了轶事对医疗决策的普遍影响。
