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Continued from previous page
Funded by a grant from the National
Science Foundation, Kahn and Luce
looked for answers through a series of
four experiments using human subjects
who were put in a variety of settings
and circumstances, and then were
observed. The study’s findings?
While there’s concern in the medical
literature that excessive follow-up
tests may reduce a healthy patient’s tendency
to be retested because it will shake
the patient’s faith in the test, we actually
found the opposite,” Luce says. “Our
studies concluded that patients feel
more vulnerable, and this increases the
propensity to retest. But it appears to be
true only in situations where patients
feel there is no good alternative to testing.
So one implication of our findings
is that giving patients alternatives – such
as suggesting ways to cure the disease
directly – could reverse the motivational
effects of the suspicious test result.”
“The two researchers also suspect that
test-generated feelings of vulnerability
may dwindle over time, and are now
engaged in additional studies to gauge
patient response to repeated suspicious
test results. As an extension of their first
study, Luce and Kahn are interviewing
mammogram recipients at the Hospital
of the University of Pennsylvania and
also plan a broad survey that examines
women’s reactions to one or several suspicious
mammograms. “We want to
examine their feelings of perceived vulnerability,
their perceptions of how
accurate or useful the tests are, and
finally their actions,” Luce says.
Ultimately, Luce and Kahn hope
their research will lead to policy implications
for medical professionals. “If
doctors could make mammograms
more accurate they would. But equivocal
results are a frequent and unfortunate
reality, and that’s not likely to
change in the near future. Our goal,
then, is to provide medical professionals
with the information they need to
predict a patient’s reaction to testing
errors so that negative patient reactions
can be minimized by finding better
ways to communicate test results.”
A Station
Wagon, Or
A Roadster?
We’ve all seen the ads: a family sits incubated
in the cozy expanse of a Volvo,
winding down a beautiful country road,
snugly buckled in, wife and children
smiling calmly with the knowledge that
they are safe – safer than in nearly any
other car – in this Swedish fortress of
steel and airbags.
Even in the absence of data demonstrating
its effects on consumer decision
making, advertising agencies have
played on emotional themes such as
safety for years. Michelin’s baby-centered
ads communicate a link between
tire brand and protecting one’s family;
life insurance companies routinely stress
the potential catastrophe to loved-ones
that can come with under-coverage.
Even seemingly mundane consumer
decisions have emotional implications:
Was that shampoo tested on animals?
Do those diapers biodegrade?
For marketers, decision making is
perhaps the key to understanding consumer
behavior. Another area of Luce’s
work investigates the often difficult
trade-offs that consumers face and how
those trade-offs ultimately affect their
purchases: price versus safety in buying
a car, quality of life versus longevity in
making a health care choice, or risk versus
return in choosing investments for
a child’s college fund or retirement.
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