Judgment of riskiness: impact of personality, naive theories and heuristic thinking among female students.
Three different studies were conducted to examine the impact of heuristic reasoning in the perception of health-related events: lifetime risk of breast cancer (Study 1, n = 468), subjective life expectancy (Study 2, n = 449), and subjective age of onset of menopause (Study 3, n = 448). In each study, three experimental conditions were set up: control, anchoring heuristic and availability heuristic. Analyses of Covariance controlling for optimism, depressive mood, Locus of Control, hypochondriac tendencies and subjective health, indicated significant effect of experimental conditions on perceived breast-cancer risk (p = 0.000), subjective life expectancy (p = 0.000) and subjective onset of menopause (p = 0.000). Indeed, all findings revealed that availability and anchoring heuristics were being used to estimate personal health-related events. The results revealed that some covariates, hypochondriac tendencies in Study 1, optimism, depressive mood and subjective health in Study 2 and internal locus of control in Study 3 had significant impact on judgment of riskiness.
Gana
Kamel
K
Department of Psychology, Nancy University, Nancy, France. kamel.gana@univ-nancy2.fr
Lourel
Marcel
M
Trouillet
Raphaël
R
Fort
Isabelle
I
Mezred
Djamila
D
Blaison
Christophe
C
Boudjemadi
Valerian
V
K'Delant
Pascaline
P
Ledrich
Julie
J
D000293:Adolescent; D017668:Age of Onset; D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000453:epidemiology*; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D007600:Judgment; D008017:Life Expectancy; D008593:Menopause; D010551:Personality; D018570:Risk Assessment; D013334:Students; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D055815:Young Adult