Framing Effect in Medical Decision Making

Abstract

In the century that the medical system is becoming more and more mature, there are more options interfering patients’ eyes. Framing effect, known to be effective in one’s decision-making process, can lead patients to certain options, misunderstandings and subsequent arbitrary decisions may take place. Therefore, in this study, four main factors, or effects, are discussed based on framing effect. People behave preferences according to words they hear. This ‘words’ include descriptive adjectives attached to one event or object, numerical descriptions like survival probability and whether it is described as an uncertainty or a risk. As a result of loss aversion, a negative description will lead to risk-taking behaviours, while a positive description will lead to risk aversion ones. At the same time, if the given probability level is considerably low, patients will turn to risk aversion and choose conservative treatments, weighing life quality more than quantity. Aside from numeric, people show consistent disbelief upon uncertainty to certain risk no matter the real probability level and will set a subjective probability for uncertain choices. Health state utility can also be another indicator when judging the patients’ state because of the prospect theory. In conclusion, people with different health states put different anticipation on medical results. Ages and prior disease experience are the two main factors influencing the patients’ own measurement of their health state utilities. The older the patients are, the more utility they will assign to. Those who have historical disease assign more utility than those who do not.