Healthy Skepticism Library item: 17735

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Swindell JS, McGuire AL, Halpern SD
Beneficent Persuasion: Techniques and Ethical Guidelines to Improve Patients’ Decisions
Annals of Family Medicine 2010 May 1; 8:(3):260-264
http://www.annfammed.org/cgi/content/abstract/8/3/260

Abstract:

Physicians frequently encounter patients who make decisions that contravene their long-term goals. Behavioral economists have shown that irrationalities and self-thwarting tendencies pervade human decision making, and they have identified a number of specific heuristics (rules of thumb) and biases that help explain why patients sometimes make such counterproductive decisions. In this essay, we use clinical examples to describe the many ways in which these heuristics and biases influence patients’ decisions. We argue that physicians should develop their understanding of these potentially counterproductive decisional biases and, in many cases, use this knowledge to rebias their patients in ways that promote patients’ health or other values. Using knowledge of decision-making psychology to persuade patients to engage in healthy behaviors or to make treatment decisions that foster their long-term goals is ethically justified by physicians’ duties to promote their patients’ interests and will often enhance, rather than limit, their patients’ autonomy. We describe techniques that physicians may use to frame health decisions to patients in ways that are more likely to motivate patients to make choices that are less biased and more conducive to their long-term goals. Marketers have been using these methods for decades to get patients to engage in unhealthy behaviors; employers and policy makers are beginning to consider the use of similar approaches to influence healthy choices. It is time for clinicians also to make use of behavioral psychology in their interactions with patients.

Keywords:
Decision making • professional autonomy • informed consent • ethics • persuasive communication