Perceived Social Norms Guide Health Care Decisions for Oneself and Others: A Cross-Sectional Experiment in a US Online Panel.
Perceived Social Norms Guide Health Care Decisions for Oneself and Others: A Cross-Sectional Experiment in a US Online Panel.
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DOI：
10.1177/0272989x211067223
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发表时间：
2022-04
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Bruine de Bruin W
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Strough J;Stone ER;Parker AM;Bruine de Bruin W
Global aging has increased reliance on surrogates to make healthcare decisions for others. We investigated differences between making healthcare decisions and predicting healthcare decisions, self-other differences for made and predicted healthcare decisions, and the roles of perceived social norms, emotional closeness, empathy, age, and gender. Participants (n=2,037) from a nationally-representative US panel were randomly assigned to make or to predict a healthcare decision. They were also randomly assigned to one of five recipients: themselves, a loved one 60 years or older, a loved one younger than 60, a distant acquaintance 60 or older, or a distant acquaintance younger than 60. Hypothetical healthcare scenarios depicted choices between relatively safe lower-risk treatments with a good chance of yielding mild health improvements versus higher-risk treatments that offered a moderate chance of substantial health improvements. Participants reported their likelihood of choosing lower vs. higher-risk treatments, their perceptions of family and friends’ approval of risky healthcare decisions, and their empathy. We present three key findings. First, made decisions involved less risk taking than predicted decisions, especially for distant others. Second, predicted decisions were similar for others and oneself, but made decisions were less risk taking for others than oneself. People predicted that loved ones would be less risk taking than distant others. Third, perceived social norms were more strongly associated than empathy with made and predicted decisions. Hypothetical scenarios may not adequately represent emotional processes in healthcare decision making. Perceived social norms may sway people to take less risk in healthcare decisions, especially when making decisions for others. These findings have implications for improving surrogate decision making.
