Using knowledge of decision-making psychology to persuade patients to engage in healthy behaviors or to make treatment decisions that foster their long-term goals is ethically justified by physicians’ duties to promote their patients’ interests and will often enhance, rather than limit, their patients’ autonomy.

Source

Paper related to this workshop and moc-persuasion.

Beneficent Persuasion: Techniques and Ethical Guidelines to Improve Patients’ Decisions

J. S. Swindell, PhD, Amy L. McGuire, JD, PhD, and Scott D. Halpern, MD, PhD, MBE

The following content (reaction paper) was generated by an LLM.

What is the summary of the paper?

The paper discusses the influence of heuristics and biases on patient decision-making in healthcare settings and argues that physicians may need to actively counteract these biases to promote patients’ long-term health and goals. It suggests that while respecting patient autonomy, physicians should understand and potentially rechannel these biases to assist patients in making decisions that align with their long-term interests. The paper also provides clinical examples and strategies for how physicians might ethically ‘rebias’ patients to overcome counterproductive influences on their decision-making processes.

What is the research question? (How) was it answered?

The research question is whether patients can consistently make choices that promote their values and goals without being influenced by decisional biases and heuristics. It was answered by illustrating how these biases and heuristics affect patients’ decisions and suggesting that physicians ethically use their understanding of decisional psychology to help patients make choices that align with their long-term health or other goals. The answer also includes discussions on when and how physicians might appropriately rechannel patients’ decision-making processes in clinical settings.

What research approach did the authors choose? Is it appropriate for achieving the chosen research objective?

The authors chose a descriptive and prescriptive research approach, focusing on how decisional biases and heuristics influence patient choices and suggesting ways for physicians to ethically influence patient decision-making to promote long-term health goals. This approach is appropriate for achieving the research objective of understanding and improving patient decision-making in clinical settings by incorporating knowledge of psychological biases. The authors aim to enhance patient autonomy and beneficence by guiding physicians on when and how to intervene in patients’ decision processes.

What are the key findings of the article? What are the implications?

The key findings of the article suggest that patients’ decision-making is often influenced by various biases and heuristics, which can lead to choices that do not align with their long-term health goals or values. The implications are that physicians should be aware of these biases and may need to guide patients by “rechanneling” these influences to help them make decisions that better serve their long-term interests. The article recommends that physicians understand patients’ goals, make them aware of potential biases affecting their decisions, and in some cases, persuasively reframe information to promote better health outcomes.

What are the limitations of the article? How might future work build on this article?

The limitations of the article include a potential oversimplification of patient decision-making by assuming patients can consistently make choices aligned with their values and goals, without fully accounting for the influence of decisional biases and heuristics. Future work could build on this article by exploring more nuanced approaches to understanding patient preferences and developing strategies to help patients make decisions that are less influenced by biases, possibly through more personalized and context-aware interventions. Additionally, further research could investigate the ethical implications and best practices for physicians when attempting to ‘rebias’ patients towards healthier or more goal-congruent decisions.

@article{swindell_beneficent_2010,
	title = {Beneficent Persuasion: Techniques and Ethical Guidelines to Improve Patients’ Decisions},
	volume = {8},
	issn = {1544-1709},
	url = {https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866725/},
	doi = {10.1370/afm.1118},
	shorttitle = {Beneficent Persuasion},
	abstract = {Physicians frequently encounter patients who make decisions that contravene their long-term goals. Behavioral economists have shown that irrationalities and self-thwarting tendencies pervade human decision making, and they have identified a number of specific heuristics (rules of thumb) and biases that help explain why patients sometimes make such counterproductive decisions. In this essay, we use clinical examples to describe the many ways in which these heuristics and biases influence patients’ decisions. We argue that physicians should develop their understanding of these potentially counterproductive decisional biases and, in many cases, use this knowledge to rebias their patients in ways that promote patients’ health or other values. Using knowledge of decision-making psychology to persuade patients to engage in healthy behaviors or to make treatment decisions that foster their long-term goals is ethically justified by physicians’ duties to promote their patients’ interests and will often enhance, rather than limit, their patients’ autonomy. We describe techniques that physicians may use to frame health decisions to patients in ways that are more likely to motivate patients to make choices that are less biased and more conducive to their long-term goals. Marketers have been using these methods for decades to get patients to engage in unhealthy behaviors; employers and policy makers are beginning to consider the use of similar approaches to influence healthy choices. It is time for clinicians also to make use of behavioral psychology in their interactions with patients.},
	pages = {260--264},
	number = {3},
	journaltitle = {Annals of Family Medicine},
	shortjournal = {Ann Fam Med},
	author = {Swindell, J. S. and {McGuire}, Amy L. and Halpern, Scott D.},
	urldate = {2024-01-09},
	date = {2010-05},
	pmid = {20458111},
	pmcid = {PMC2866725},
}