Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Table 10.1
How can practitioners de-bias consumers?
Process
used
Source of bias
Required action
Possible solutions
Example
Top-down
Inappropriate
discounting of
population
Increase salience of
population by
reconstructing
the base rate
↑ Temporal
proximity
Describe the
incidence of STIs
last year in a
nearby college
dorm when
targeting students
↑ Geographical
proximity
↑ Social proximity
↑ Probabilistic
proximity
Increase salience of
population by
reframing the
base rate
Semantically
change the
manner in
which
information is
provided
People infer that “1
out of 5” is lower
in magnitude
than “20 %”
Bottom-up
Inaccurate
Identification
of symptom
Increase the
likelihood that
the symptom is
accurately
identified
Make ambiguous
symptoms less
ambiguous
Risk behavior
framed as “drank
more than six
alcoholic
beverages in the
last week” rather
than “drink
alcohol
frequently”
Increase
accessibility of
infrequent
symptoms
Recalling a
few
risk
behaviors for
AIDS increases
risk estimates
Present evidence
regarding the
consequences
of ignoring the
symptom
Describe a specific
individual who
ignored a
particular
symptom and the
resulting
consequences
Inaccurate
perceptions of
the diagnostic-
ity of the
symptoms
Improve the
diagnosticity of
the symptom
Present evidence
of correlation
of symptom
with a disease
Celebrity testimonial
of the symptom
they noticed that
led to diagnosis
10.8
The Effect of Base Rates on Risk Assessment:
The Top-down Process
While the individual presence of symptoms for an individual is one way to help
people recognize their risk, providing them with the overall base rate of occurrence
of any event or disease in the population is another. Many companies use absolute
numbers (“Seventeen million Americans have diabetes, and … nearly six million of
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