Biased Reasoning: Adaptive Responses to Health Risk Feedback

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2004, Pages 384-396

  Renner, Britta ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GREIFSWALD   (Germany)

Author keywords

Expectations; Feedback; Motivation; Reasoning; Risk perception

Indexed keywords

ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR; ARTICLE; ATTITUDE; DECISION MAKING; FEEDBACK SYSTEM; FEMALE; HEALTH BEHAVIOR; HIGH RISK BEHAVIOR; HUMAN; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; MOTIVATION;

ADAPTATION, PSYCHOLOGICAL; ATTITUDE; DECISION MAKING; FEEDBACK; FEMALE; HEALTH BEHAVIOR; HUMANS; MALE; MIDDLE AGED; MOTIVATION; RISK-TAKING;

EID: 1142301968     PISSN: 01461672     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0146167203261296     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Avis, N. E., Smith, K. W., & McKinlay, J. B. (1989). Accuracy of perceptions of heart attack risk: What influences perceptions and can they be changed? American Journal of Public Health, 79, 1608-1611.
2. Baumann, L. J., Cameron, L. D., Zimmerman, R. S., & Leventhal, H. (1989). Illness representations and matching symptoms. Health Psychology, 8, 449-469.
3. Baumeister, R. F., Bratslavsky, E., Finkenauer, C., & Vohs, K. D. (2001). Bad is stronger than good. Review of General Psychology, 5, 323-370.
4. Campbell, W. K., & Sedikides, C. (1999). Self-threat magnifies the self-serving bias: A meta-analytic integration. Review of General Psychology, 3, 23-43.
5. Cioffi, D. (1991). Asymmetry of doubt in medical self-diagnosis: The ambiguity of "uncertain wellness." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 969-980.
6. Croyle, R. T. (1990). Biased appraisal of high blood pressure. Preventive Medicine, 19, 40-44.
7. Croyle, R. T., Sun, Y. C., & Hart, M. (1997). Processing risk factor information: Defensive biases in health-related judgments and memory. In K. L. Petrie & J. A. Weinman (Eds.), Perceptions of health and illness (pp. 267-290). Amsterdam: Harwood Academic.
8. Croyle, R. T., Sun, Y. C., & Louie, D. H. (1993). Psychological minimization of cholesterol test results: Moderators of appraisal in college students and community residents. Health Psychology, 12, 503-507.
9. Davidson, K., & Prkachin, K. (1997). Optimism and unrealistic optimism have an interacting impact on health-promoting behavior and knowledge changes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25, 617-625.
10. Dawson, E., Gilovich, T., & Regan, D. T. (2002). Motivated reasoning and performance on the Wason Selection Task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379-1387.
11. Ditto, P. H., Jemmott, J. B., & Darley, J. M. (1988). Appraising the threat of illness: A mental representational approach. Health Psychology, 7, 183-201.
12. Ditto, P. H., & Lopez, D. F. (1992). Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 568-584.
13. Ditto, P. H., Scepansky, J. A., Munro, G. D., Apanovitch, A. M., & Lockhart, L. K. (1998). Motivated sensitivity to preference-inconsistent information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 53-69.
14. Dunning, D. (1995). Trait importance and modifiability as factors influencing self-assessment and self-enhancement motives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1297-1306.
15. Edwards, K., & Smith, E. E. (1996). A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 5-24.
16. Fuchs, R. (1996). Causal models of physical exercise participation: Testing the predictive power of the construct "pressure to change." Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26, 1931-1960.
17. Gilbert, D. T., & Malone, P. S. (1995). The correspondence bias. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 21-38.
18. Glanz, K., & Gilboy, M. B. (1995). Psychosocial impact of cholesterol screening and management. In R. T. Croyle (Ed.), Psychosocial effects of screening for disease prevention and detection (pp. 39-64). London: Oxford University Press.
19. Hilton, J. L., Klein, J. G., & von Hippel, W. (1991). Attention allocation and impression formation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 77, 548-559.
20. Irle, M., & Krolage, J. (1973). Kognitive Konsequenzen irrtümlicher Selbsteinschätzungen [Cognitive consequences of erroneous self-judgments]. Zeitschrift für Sozialpsychologie, 4, 36-50.
21. Jemmott, J. B., Ditto, P. H., & Croyle, R. T. (1986).Judging health status: Effects of perceived prevalence and personal relevance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 899-905.
22. Jussim, L., Yen, H. J., & Aiello, J. R. (1995). Self-consistency, self-enhancement, and accuracy in reactions to feedback. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 31, 322-356.
23. Kreuter, M. W., & Strecher, V. J. (1995). Changing inaccurate perceptions of health risk: Results from a randomized trial. Health Psychology, 14, 56-63.
24. Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480-498.
25. Liberman, A., & Chaiken, S. (1992). Defensive processing of personally relevant health messages. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 669-679.
26. Lord, C. G., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 2098-2109.
27. McCaul, K. D., Thiesse-Duffy, E., & Wilson, P. (1992). Coping with medical diagnosis: The effects of at-risk versus disease labels over time. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 22, 1340-1355.
28. Michie, S., Weinman, J., Miller, J., Collins, V., Halliday, J., & Marteau, T. M. (2002). Predictive genetic testing: High risk expectations in the face of low risk information. Journal of Behavioural Medicine, 25, 33-50.
29. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. (1995). Recommendations regarding public screening for measuring blood cholesterol (NIH Publication No. 95-3045). Bethesda, MD: National Institutes of Health.
30. Nerenz, D. R., Leventhal, H., Love, R. R., & Ringler, K. E. (1984). Psychological aspects of cancer chemotherapy. International Review of Applied Psychology, 33, 521-529.
31. Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: Central and peripheral routes to attitude changes. New York: Academic Press.
32. Pratto, F., & John, O. P. (1991). Automatic vigilance: The attention-grabbing power of negative social information. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 380-391.
33. Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (1987). Toward an integration of cognitive and motivational perspectives on social inference: A biased hypothesis-testing model. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 20, pp. 297-340). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
34. Radcliffe, N. M., & Klein, W. M. P. (2002). Dispositional, unrealistic, and comparative optimism: Differential relations with the knowledge and processing of risk information and beliefs about personal risk. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 836-846.
35. Renner, B. (in press). Hindsight bias after receiving self-relevant health risk information: A motivational perspective. Memory.
36. Renner, B., & Schwarzer, R. (in press). Social-cognitive factors predicting health behavior change. In J. Suls & K. Wallston (Eds.), Social psychological foundations of health and illness. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
37. Schwarzer, R., & Renner, B. (2000). Social-cognitive predictors of health behavior: Action self-efficacy and coping self-efficacy. Health Psychology, 19, 487-495.
38. Sedikides, C. (1993). Assessment, enhancement, and verification determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.
39. Shepperd, J. A., Findley-Klein, C., Kwavnick, K. D., Walker, D., & Perez, S. (2000). Bracing for loss. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 78, 620-634.
40. Shepperd, J. A., & McNulty, J. K. (2002). The affective consequences of expected and unexpected outcomes. Psychological Science, 13, 85-88.
41. Shrauger, J. S. (1975). Responses to evaluation as a function of initial self-perceptions. Psychological Bulletin, 82, 581-596.
42. Stahlberg, D., Petersen, L. E., & Dauenheimer, D. (1999). Preferences for and evaluation of self-relevant information depending on the elaboration of the self-schemata involved. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29, 489-502.
43. Stangor, C., & McMillan, D. (1992). Memory for expectancy-congruent and expectancy-incongruent information: A review of the social and social developmental literatures. Psychological Bulletin, 111, 42-61.
44. Swann, W. B., Jr. (1983). Self-verification: Bringing social reality into harmony with the self. In J. Suls & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Social psychological perspectives on the self (Vol. 2, pp. 33-66). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
45. Swann, W. B., Jr., Griffin, J. J., Predmore, S. C., & Gaines, B. (1987). The cognitive-affective crossfire: When self-consistency confronts self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 881-889.
46. Swann, W. B., Jr., & Schroeder, D. G. (1995). The search for beauty and truth: A framework for understanding reactions to evaluations. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1307-1318.
47. Taylor, S. E. (1991). Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: The mobilization minimization hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 67-85.
48. Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 193-210.
49. Taylor, S. E., Neter, E., & Wayment, H. A. (1995). Self-evaluation processes. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 1278-1287.
50. Troschke, J. von, Klaes, L., Maschewsky-Schneider, U., & Scheuermann, W. (1998). Die Deutsche Herz-Kreislauf-Präventionsstudie [The German cardiovascular prevention study]. Bern, Germany: Huber.
51. Weinstein, N. D. (1980). Unrealistic optimism about future life events. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 806-820.
52. Weinstein, N. D. (in press). Exploring the links between risk perceptions and preventive health behavior. In J. Suis & K. Wallston (Eds.), Social psychological foundations of health and illness. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
53. Weinstein, N. D., & Klein, W. M. (1995). Resistance of personal risk perceptions to debiasing interventions. Health Psychology, 14, 132-140.
54. Wiebe, D. J., & Black, D. (1997). Illusional beliefs in the context of risky sexual behaviors. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 27, 1727-1749.