UCL School of Management

Research seminar

Chiara Longoni, NYU Stern School of Business

Date

Wednesday, 11 November 2015
10:00 – 11:30
Description

Disease labelling effects on health perceptions

Though disease labels are critical to decisions taken by individuals, physicians, insurance companies, and legal institutions, little is known about the influence of labeling a constellation of symptoms as a disease on health perceptions.

Longoni explores such influence across five studies and documents a theoretically novel and substantively important disease labeling effect, whereby categorisation-based biases and defensive processes systematically interact and bias judgements of health risk.

A label explicitly signaling a mild ailment (or interpreted as such) leads to higher risk estimates when compared to a medical condition without a label. On the contrary, a label explicitly signaling a severe ailment (or interpreted as such) leads to lower risk estimates when compared to a medical condition without a label.

Longoni illustrates the motivational underpinnings of this disease labeling effect by comparing risk estimates for one’s self and average others, and by manipulating defensiveness-related variables. Longoni also confirms that this disease labeling effect is robust across several health domains, and when controlling for various exogenous variables such as pre-existing health expectations, well being, hypochondria, incidental affect and arousal. 

 

Open to
All students
Staff
Last updated Thursday, 10 December 2015