How base rates frame personal risk judgments

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla C. Chandler ◽  
Leilani A. Greening ◽  
Leslie Robison
Keyword(s):  
Base Rates ◽  
Personal Risk ◽  
Risk Judgments

Life after Heart Transplantation

2002 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia Savadori ◽  
Lorella Lotto ◽  
Rino Rumiati
Keyword(s):  
Heart Transplantation ◽  
Frame Of Reference ◽  
Physician Communication ◽  
Risk Averse ◽  
Medical Team ◽  
Perceived Knowledge ◽  
Surgical Technology ◽  
Postoperative Therapy ◽  
Life Expectation ◽  
Risk Judgments

Progress in surgical technology and in postoperative therapy has remarkably increased life expectation after heart transplantation. Nevertheless, patients still show a resistance to resume a normal life after transplantation, for example, to return to work. In this study we assume that after surgery patients become risk averse because they achieve a positive frame of reference. Because of this propensity toward risk aversion, they withhold from engaging in behavior that their physical condition would allow them in principle. Coherent with this assumption we found that compared to the medical team patients overestimate the degree of risk for routine activities. The study also showed that the representation of risk by the patients could be captured by a dreadfulness factor and a voluntariness factor. Patients' risk judgments were strongly and specifically predicted by the perceived degree of dreadfulness of the activity and, to a lesser extent, by the perceived knowledge of the consequences. Implications for patient-physician communication were explored.

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