title: Effects of symptom presentation order on perceived disease risk.
abstract: People are quick to perceive meaningful patterns in the co-occurrence of events. We report two studies exploring the effects of streaks in symptom checklists on perceived personal disease risk. In the context of these studies, a streak is a sequence of consecutive items on a list that share the characteristic of being either general or specific. We identify a psychological mechanism underlying the effect of streaks in a list of symptoms and show that the effect of streaks on perceived risk varies with the length of the symptom list. Our findings reveal a tendency to infer meaning from streaks in medical and health decision making. Participants perceived a higher personal risk of having an illness when presented with a checklist in which common symptoms were grouped together than when presented with a checklist in which these same symptoms were separated by rare symptoms. This research demonstrates that something as arbitrary as the order in which symptoms are presented in a checklist can affect perceived risk of disease.
authors.affiliation: Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. virginia.kwan@asu.edu
authors.forename: Virginia S Y
authors.initials: VS
authors.lastname: Kwan
authors.forename: Sean P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Wojcik
authors.forename: Talya
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Miron-Shatz
authors.forename: Ashley M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Votruba
authors.forename: Christopher Y
authors.initials: CY
authors.lastname: Olivola
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D057189:Checklist; D005260:Female; D006262:Health; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception; D012306:Risk