![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Fear.jpg\" "\\"fear\\"")
You\u2019ve been feeling under the weather. You Google your symptoms. A half-hour later, you\u2019re convinced it\u2019s nothing serious\u2014or afraid you have cancer. More than 60 percent of Americans get their health information online, and a majority of those decide whether to see a doctor based on what they find. \u201cWow, this is an era of self-diagnosis,\u201d thought Arizona State University psychologist Virginia Kwan, learning that statistic. How might information accessed online affect individual health decisions?<\/p>\n
In a new study, Kwan and her colleagues found that the way information is presented\u2014specifically, the order in which symptoms are listed\u2014makes a significant difference<\/strong>. \u201cPeople irrationally infer more meanings from a \u2018streak\u2019\u201d\u2014an uninterrupted series whether of high rolls of the dice or disease symptoms of consecutively reported symptoms<\/strong>. If they check off more symptoms in a row, the research found, \u201cthey perceive a higher personal risk of having that illness.\u201d The study\u2014conducted with Sean Wojcik of the University of California, Irvine, Talya Miron-shatz of Ono Academic College, Ashley Votruba of ASU, and Christopher Olivola of the University of Warwick\u2014 appears in Psychological Science<\/em>, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.<\/p>\n Surveying cancer-related sites, the researchers discovered that these vary in the way they present common and mild\u2014or \u201cgeneral\u201d\u2014symptoms and more specific and serious ones. To test how streaks affect risk perception, students were presented with lists of six symptoms of a fictional kind of thyroid cancer (\u201cisthmal\u201d). One group got three general symptoms (such as fatigue and weight fluctuation) followed by three specific ones (e.g., lump in the neck); another the reverse order; and the third group a list alternating between general and specific. Participants checked off symptoms they\u2019d experienced in the previous six weeks and then rated their perceived likelihood of having the cancer. The first two orders yielded similar risk ratings. But the ratings were significantly lower when the list alternated<\/strong>.<\/p>\n A second experiment compared lists of 12 or 6 symptoms, this time for a real cancer, meningioma. The three orders were the same as in the first experiment. The effect of order disappeared for the longer, but not the shorter, list\u2014that is, the influence of streaks was diluted when the list was longer. It\u2019s possible that even if a participant checked a series of symptoms\u2014leading to suspicion of disease\u2014boxes left unchecked offered reassurance of to the contrary, the authors think.<\/p>\n The findings could prove useful for public health education, Kwan says. \u201cWith certain types of illnesses, people tend to seek medical attention at the latest stage.\u201d Meanwhile, \u201cpeople also go to doctors asking all the time about illnesses that are very rare.\u201d\u00a0 To encourage people to seek earlier health screenings, grouping common and mild symptoms might be wise. To limit overreaction, the rare ones should top the list<\/strong>. Reaching particular populations is also a public health challenge. \u201cCollege students think they are invincible,\u201d says Kwan. \u201cThere are ways to structure information to help them realize there are diseases that don\u2019t discriminate.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the Association for Psychological Science press release: You\u2019ve been feeling under the weather. You Google your symptoms. A half-hour later, you\u2019re convinced it\u2019s nothing serious\u2014or afraid you have cancer…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,10],"tags":[363,12],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1917,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1916\/revisions\/1917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}