The Role of Medical Language in Changing Public Perceptions of Illness

This study was designed to investigate the impact of medical terminology on perceptions of disease. Specifically, we look at the changing public perceptions of newly medicalized disorders with accompanying newly medicalized terms (e.g. impotence has become erectile dysfunction disorder). Does using “medicalese” to label a recently medicalized disorder lead to a change in the perception of that condition? Undergraduate students (n = 52) rated either the medical or lay label for recently medicalized disorders (such as erectile dysfunction disorder vs. impotence) and established medical conditions (such as a myocardial infarction vs. heart attack) for their perceived seriousness, disease representativeness and prevalence. Students considered the medical label of the recently medicalized disease to be more serious (mean = 4.95 (SE = .27) vs. mean = 3.77 (SE = .24) on a ten point scale), more representative of a disease (mean = 2.47 (SE = .09) vs. mean = 1.83 (SE = .09) on a four point scale), and have lower prevalence (mean = 68 (SE = 12.6) vs. mean = 122 (SE = 18.1) out of 1,000) than the same disease described using common language. A similar pattern was not seen in the established medical conditions, even when controlled for severity. This study demonstrates that the use of medical language in communication can induce bias in perception; a simple switch in terminology results in a disease being perceived as more serious, more likely to be a disease, and more likely to be a rare condition. These findings regarding the conceptualization of disease have implications for many areas, including medical communication with the public, advertising, and public policy

The anthropology of money and finance : between ethnography and world history

We review here recent developments in the anthropology of money and finance, listing its achievements, shortcomings and prospects, while referring back to the discipline‘s founders a century ago. We take our departure from the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, both of whom combined openness to ethnographic research with a vision of world history as a whole. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have tended to restrict themselves to niche fields and marginal debates. From the 1980s the anthropological study of money and ethnographies of finance especially have taken off. Despite taking on new objects and directions, anthropologists still find it difficult to connect their situated analyses with global processes and world history. We propose some conceptual and empirical directions for research that would seek to overcome these limitations by integrating ethnography more closely with human history, while stressing the importance of money in shaping world society and in attempts to reform it.http://www.annualreviews.org/hb201

Role Morality in the Accounting Profession – How do we Compare to Physicians and Attorneys?

accountants compared to attorneys and physicians, ethical behavior, role morality,