Little is known about the affective implications of communicating negative information about medical tests. This research explored how affective processes - particularly the Affect Heuristic and cancer anxiety - influence the way in which people respond to such information.
Participants received different types of information about PSA screening for prostate cancer and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans for migraine headaches. This was a 2 (Test harm information: present vs. absent) × 2 (Test benefit information: present vs. absent) × 2 (Test recommendation: present vs. absent) between-participants design.
Perceived risk, perceived benefit and general attitudes towards PSA and MRI testing, cancer anxiety, preferences to receive the tests vs. not.
As predicted by the Affect Heuristic, test harm information reduced perceived test benefits. However, information about uncertain test benefit did not increase perceived test risks. Information about the test reduced cancer anxiety, indicating defensive coping. These variables - affect, anxiety, perceived risks and benefits - all uniquely predicted test preferences.
Affective processes play an important role in how people respond to and interpret negative information about medical tests. Information about harms and information about the lack of benefit can both make a test seem less beneficial, and will reduce cancer anxiety as a result.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 7. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 01 March 2018.
All research outputs
#7,579,057
of 34,411,289 outputs
Outputs from Psychology & Health
#449
of 1,334 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#94,511
of 360,568 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Psychology & Health
#18
of 36 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 34,411,289 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 77th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,334 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 14.9. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 66% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 360,568 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 36 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 50% of its contemporaries.
