A Theory of Medical Decision Making and Health: Fuzzy Trace Theory

Valerie F. Reyna
Additional contact information
Valerie F. Reyna: Departments of Human Development and Psychology, CornellUniversity, Ithaca, New York, vr53@cornell.edu

Medical Decision Making, 2008, vol. 28, issue 6, 850-865

Abstract: The tenets of fuzzy trace theory are summarized with respect to their relevance to health and medical decision making. Illustrations are given for HIV prevention, cardiovascular disease, surgical risk, genetic risk, and cancer prevention and control. A core idea of fuzzy trace theory is that people rely on the gist of information, its bottom-line meaning, as opposed to verbatim details in judgment and decision making. This idea explains why precise information (e.g., about risk) is not necessarily effective in encouraging prevention behaviors or in supporting medical decision making. People can get the facts right, and still not derive the proper meaning, which is key to informed decision making. Getting the gist is not sufficient, however. Retrieval (e.g., of health-related values) and processing interference brought on by thinking about nested or overlapping classes (e.g., in ratio concepts, such as probability) are also important. Theory-based interventions that work (and why they work) are presented, ranging from specific techniques aimed at enhancing representation, retrieval, and processing to a comprehensive intervention that integrates these components.

Keywords: Key words: decision aids; risk communication; informed decision making; risk perception; behavior change. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0272989X08327066 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:medema:v:28:y:2008:i:6:p:850-865

DOI: 10.1177/0272989X08327066

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Medical Decision Making
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().