Choosing a physician depends on how you want to feel: The role of ideal affect in health-related decision making.

Abstract

When given a choice, how do people decide which physician to select? Although significant research has demonstrated that how people actually feel (their “actual affect”) influences their health care preferences, how people ideally want to feel (their “ideal affect”) may play an even greater role. Specifically, we predicted that people trust physicians whose affective characteristics match their ideal affect, which leads people to prefer those physicians more. Consistent with this prediction, the more participants wanted to feel high arousal positive states on average ([ideal HAP]; e.g., excited), the more likely they were to select a HAP-focused physician. Similarly, the more people wanted to feel low arousal positive states on average ([ideal LAP]; e.g., calm), the more likely they were to select a LAP-focused physician. Also as predicted, these links were mediated by perceived physician trustworthiness. Notably, while participants’ ideal affect predicted physician preference, actual affect (how much people actually felt HAP and LAP on average) did not. These findings suggest that people base even serious decisions on how they want to feel and highlight the importance of considering ideal affect in models of decision making, person perception, and patient physician communication.

Ideal affect in daily life: implications for affective experience, health, and social behavior

“…Although we collected other social judgments (e.g., intelligence, financial neediness), only trustworthiness mattered for these effects. This is consistent with our finding that people chose physicians who matched their ideal affect in part because they trusted them more [46]. Together, these findings support the notion that ideal affect match results in more positive social judgments, which result in more prosocial behaviors.…”

“…Second, they suggest that certain ideals (i.e., extreme happiness) may be detrimental to one’s health. In other research, we have also demonstrated how people’s ideal affect shapes their preferences for and evaluations of physicians, their adherence to physicians’ recommendations, and even their recall of physicians’ recommendations [22, 46, 47]. This work suggests that clinicians should also consider how patients’ ideal affect may influence how patients respond to them.…”

The good doctor: more than medical knowledge & surgical skill

“…Here are some attributes that will help you to fulfill all six ACGME core clinical competencies during your medical training and will remain essential throughout a good doctor’s career (Table 1): (2–9). …”

The cultural construction of emotions

“…Individuals seek out situations that foster emotions that are useful to culturally central tasks [22,27,28] in the same way that they cultivate emotions that are useful to other types of tasks at hand [29,30]. However, cultural construction of emotions goes beyond either seeking out desired emotions or avoiding condemned emotions.…”