Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
10.14.3
Cost/Benefit of Seeking Treatment (Psychological,
Social, Financial)
Future research is urged to examine the effects of the costs and benefits of seeking
treatment as a function of individual differences and contextual characteristics of a
disease. For example,
1. Hypochondriacs/treatment-averse: How does one reduce the cost to a health care
system from the former and encourage the latter to seek help?
2. Socially fashionable/stigmatized conditions: How does one reposition a stigma-
tized disease as one that needs treatment. Good examples of such diseases
include those that are psychological and considered a weakness, as well as those
that invoke private behaviors, such as STDs.
3. Role of controllability/curability: What is the role of the controllability and cur-
ability of a condition in the judgment for a person to accept risk and make a
decision to seek diagnosis and treatment?
4. Presence of treatment and effectiveness of it on risk assessment: How does the
mere presence of alternate treatments and options as well as their perceived effi-
cacy affect consumers' judgments to estimate their own risk and engage in pre-
ventative behaviors.
10.14.4
Using the Two Types of Risk Estimation Methods
at Different Stages
Finally, an interesting avenue for future research would be to examine when and
how the two processes of top-down and bottom-up risk estimation are combined.
Do different people use different methods? Are different methods used for different
diseases? Or is it possible that there is a two-stage process such that there is a non-
compensatory selection (identification) of symptoms and risk factors followed by a
compensatory integration of identified symptoms that are then combined with (con-
ditional) base rates to estimate risk?
References
Ajzen I, Fishbein M (1975) A Bayesian analysis of attribution processes. Psychol Bull
82(March):261-277
Albarracin D, Johnson BT, Fishbein M, Muellerleile P (2001) Theories of reasoned action and
planned behavior as models of condom use: a meta-analysis. Psychol Bull 127(January):142-161
Alkahami AS, Slovic P (1994) A psychological study of the inverse relationship between per-
ceived risk and perceived benefit. Risk Anal 14(6):1085-1096
Bar-Hillel M (1980) The base-rate fallacy in probability judgments. Acta Psychol 44:211-233
Beck AT (1967) Depression: clinical, experimental, and theoretical aspects. Harper and Row, New York
Search WWH ::
Custom Search