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Probability Distortions and Outcome Desirability: Experimental Verification of Medical Folklore 1
Author(s) -
Jones Russell A.,
Howard Patricia H.,
Haley John V.
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.1984.tb02240.x
Subject(s) - task (project management) , psychology , social psychology , computer science , cognitive psychology , management , economics
A belief common among medical personnel is that in conveying diagnoses or prognoses to patients, it is always best to emphasize the positive. In order to see if emphasis on the positive does make a difference in one's expectation of the more desirable of two alternative outcomes actually occurring, this laboratory experiment was conducted. College students were led to believe they had a low, moderate, or high probability of being assigned to one of two tasks, which differed in desirability. For some students the instructions focused on the probability of being assigned to the desirable task, whereas for others the instructions focused on the probability of being assigned to the undesirable. The two probabilities were always complementary; that is, the probability of being assigned to the desirable task was equal to one minus the probability of being assigned to the undesirable task. Following an interpolated activity, each subject's expectation of being assigned to the desirable or undesirable task was measured. Across all probability levels, subjects for whom the instructions had focused on the probability of being assigned to the desirable task viewed that assignment as significantly more likely than did subjects for whom the instructions had focused on the complementary probability of being assigned to the undesirable task. The implications of this for communicating with patients, for preventive medicine, and for coping with serious illness are briefly discussed.