Study On The Influence Of Positive And Negative Frame On Medical Decision - Making Type Of Cancer Patients

Cancer is still the world’s most serious public health problem so far, medical decision-making has become a important prolonged issues to cancer patients, which occupies a large proportion in their daily life. This study divides cancer and non-cancer people’s construal level and psychological distance of mental representation about cancer disease related medical information from Construal Level Theory(CLT), to study the medical risky decision-making and the medical intertemporal decision-making between two groups of people. What analysis and discussion focused on is, whether has the influence and how dose it impact of the same frame on cancer patients’ medical risky as well as medical intertemporal decision preferences. There are two studies:Study1 discusses effects of positive and negative framework on cancer patients’ medical risky decision-making preferences. We select the choice titration procedure, the most commonly used in money decision situations study, to make choice materials for the first time, which consists of positive frame representation(cure rate) and negative frame representation(death rate) two groups of medical choice materials. Study1 has shown that:(1) two groups of participants’ medical risky decision-making has significant differences, risky decision preference of cancer and non-cancer people has population difference;(2) for cancer group, the mean risk subjective value points of cancer participants is 33.7% under the positive framework condition, comparing with 37.5% under the negative framework condition, hasn’t shown significant framing effect, which means positive and negative frame are of no significant effect on cancer patients’ medical risky choice;(3) the mean risk subjective value points under positive and negative framework condition of non-cancer group are 47.72% and 38.57%, have shown significant framing effect;(4) comparing with non-cancer group, cancer group has shown significant risk aversion preference; non-cancer group tends to risk seeking under positive framework condition, however, a risk preference contrarian occurs in negative frame, changes to risk aversion performance.Study2 discusses effects of positive and negative framework on cancer patients’ medical intertemporal decision-making preferences. The study brings intertemporal choice studies into medical decision-making field for the first time, as well as making make choice materials by referring to the choice titration procedure. Same as study1, study2 consists of positive frame representation(cure number) and negative frame representation(death number) two groups of medical choice materials. Study2 has shown that:(1) two groups of participants’ medical intertemporal decision-making has significant differences, intertemporal decision preference of cancer and non-cancer people has population difference;(2) the mean delay subjective value points under positive and negative framework condition of cancer group are 4.36 months and 5.41 months, have shown significant framing effect; which means positive and negative frame are of significant effect on cancer patients’ medical intertemporal decision preference, they tend to choose current items instead of delay items in positive framework, however, they’ll change to choose delay items rather than current under negative frame condition;(3) for non-cancer participants, the mean delay subjective value points under positive and negative framework condition are 5.57 months and 7.19 months, which means positive and negative frame have same effect on non-cancer patients’ medical intertemporal decision preference as cancer patients’.Synthesize two parts of this research can draw conclusions as follows:(1) two groups of participants’ two types of medical decision-making both have significant differences;(2) compared with non-cancer people, cancer people more tend to risk avoidance, and there is no framing effect in both of two framework conditions;(3) compared with non-cancer people, cancer people more tend to choose current items, and there is significant framing effect in two framework conditions, which tend to current items in positive framework compared to choose delay items under negative frame condition for specific performance.