Cómo mejorar la comprensión y comunicación de información sobre riesgos médicos y salud

Informed and shared decision making require that people understand health risks. Unfortunately, many people are not risk literate and are biased by common risk communication practices. In this talk, we review a collection of studies investigating the benefits of visual aids for communicating health risks to diverse vulnerable individuals (e.g., varying in abilities, ages, risk characteristics, and cultural backgrounds). Studies show that appropriately designed visual aids are often highly effective, transparent, and ethically desirable tools for improving decision making, changing attitudes, and reducing risky behavior. Theoretical mechanisms, open questions, and emerging applications are discussedUniversidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Influencia del género como explicación de las aspiraciones profesionales futuras en alumnos universitarios

La necesidad de explicar por qué hombres y mujeres ocupan espacios distintos en nuestra sociedad como resultado de una diferenciación de género, hace necesario investigar sobre cuales son las claves de la identidad de género que pueden subyacer a tales diferencias en ámbitos como, por ejemplo, las aspiraciones profesionales en alumnos universitarios. El concepto de género tiene unas connotaciones cognitivas, motivacionales y conductuales. Se puede describir como un componente psicológico que configura las ideas acerca de la masculinidad y feminidad (Palmero y Barberá, 1997). En este sentido, es necesario establecer una diferenciación conceptual entre “sexo” y “género”. Concretamente, lLos conceptos “hombre” y “mujer”, relacionados con el concepto “sexo”, son categorías binarias y excluyentes.Los conceptos “masculino” y “femenino”, relacionados con el concepto “género”, representan continuos que se desplazan entre dos extremos, y por lo tanto, están presentes en mayor o menor medida en todos los individuos, tanto si son hombres como mujeres.En este sentido, podemos comprobar cómo el estudio sobre identidad de género ha evolucionado desde modelos unidimensionales y bidimensionales hasta las propuestas multidimensionales actuales (Korabik, 1999). Desde los primeros, se considera que la masculinidad y feminidad son dos extremos de un continuo, a los cuales se asocian hombres y mujeres respectivamente. Las investigaciones que se realizaron para apoyar estas posturas han demostrado que las diferencias reales entre sexos son mínimas (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), y que la personalidad de hombres y mujeres difieren significativamente de los estereotipos que se mantienen sobre el género (Rosenkrantz, Vogel, Bee, Broverman & Broverman, 1968).Eje: Educación universitaria: Experiencias educativasRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Influencia del género como explicación de las aspiraciones profesionales futuras en alumnos universitarios

La necesidad de explicar por qué hombres y mujeres ocupan espacios distintos en nuestra sociedad como resultado de una diferenciación de género, hace necesario investigar sobre cuales son las claves de la identidad de género que pueden subyacer a tales diferencias en ámbitos como, por ejemplo, las aspiraciones profesionales en alumnos universitarios. El concepto de género tiene unas connotaciones cognitivas, motivacionales y conductuales. Se puede describir como un componente psicológico que configura las ideas acerca de la masculinidad y feminidad (Palmero y Barberá, 1997). En este sentido, es necesario establecer una diferenciación conceptual entre “sexo” y “género”. Concretamente, lLos conceptos “hombre” y “mujer”, relacionados con el concepto “sexo”, son categorías binarias y excluyentes.Los conceptos “masculino” y “femenino”, relacionados con el concepto “género”, representan continuos que se desplazan entre dos extremos, y por lo tanto, están presentes en mayor o menor medida en todos los individuos, tanto si son hombres como mujeres.En este sentido, podemos comprobar cómo el estudio sobre identidad de género ha evolucionado desde modelos unidimensionales y bidimensionales hasta las propuestas multidimensionales actuales (Korabik, 1999). Desde los primeros, se considera que la masculinidad y feminidad son dos extremos de un continuo, a los cuales se asocian hombres y mujeres respectivamente. Las investigaciones que se realizaron para apoyar estas posturas han demostrado que las diferencias reales entre sexos son mínimas (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974), y que la personalidad de hombres y mujeres difieren significativamente de los estereotipos que se mantienen sobre el género (Rosenkrantz, Vogel, Bee, Broverman & Broverman, 1968).Eje: Educación universitaria: Experiencias educativasRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Women and leadership: Disabled to exercise leadership in public spheres?

Hablar de discapacidad, o incluso de exclusión social de las mujeres en el ámbito público, implica considerar que no están capacitadas para realizar determinadas tareas. Incluso aunque tengan plena capacidad psíquica, física y sensorial, en muchas ocasiones se trata a las mujeres como discapacitadas para ejercer determinadas labores. Esto se visualiza claramente en el porcentaje de mujeres que pueden acceder a puestos de dirección de mayor nivel, en el tipo de organizaciones en el que se producen más dificultades, o en el tipo de atribuciones que se les asigna cuando son ellas las que acceden a un puesto de mayor responsabilidad pública. En este trabajo nos centramos en los estereotipos y las atribuciones causales como variables psicosociales que dificultan que las mujeres sean vistas con plena capacidad para ejercer el liderazgo.To talk on handicap or even social exclusion of women in public affairs implies to regard that they are not able to carry on some tasks. Sometimes, women are regarded as handicapped for some works. This can be clearly seen in the percentage of women in highest level post, the kind of organizations more resultant to incorporate women or the kind of tasks carried on by women on high level posts. In this work we consider the clichés and causal attributions as psychosocial variables that difficult women can be seen as fully able for leadership

Numerate decision makers don’t use more effortful strategies unless it pays: A process tracing investigation of skilled and adaptive strategy selection in risky decision making

The present study investigated skilled and adaptive strategy selection in risky decision making. We proposed that people with high objective numeracy, a strong predictor of general decision making skill, would have a broad repertoire of choice strategies and adaptively select these strategies depending on the importance of the decision. Thus more objectively numerate people would maximize their effort (e.g., invest more time) in important, high-payoff decisions and switch to a simple, fast heuristic strategy in trivial decisions. Subjective numeracy would, by contrast, be more closely related to interest in problem solving for its own sake and would not yield such an effect of importance. Participants made twelve high-payoff choices and twelve low-payoff choices in binary two-outcome gambles framed as gains. We measured objective and subjective numeracy using standard measures. Results showed that people with high subjective numeracy generally maximized the expected value (EV) in all decisions. In contrast, participants with high objective numeracy maximized EV only when choice problems were meaningful (i.e., they could result in high payoffs). When choice problems were trivial (i.e., choosing the normatively better option would not result in a large payoff), more objectively numerate participants made choices consistent with faster, more frugal heuristic strategies.National Science Centre, Poland under grant 2015/17/D/HS6/00703Foundation for Polish Science (FNP) under grant START (111.2016)Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain) (PSI2014-51842-R)Juan de la Cierva Fellowship (FJCI-2016-28279) from the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry, and Competitivenes

Cancer awareness in older adults: Results from the Spanish Onco-barometer cross-sectional survey

Background: About half of all cancers are diagnosed in adults older than 65, making them the age group at highest risk of developing this disease. Nurses from different specialties can support individuals and communities in the prevention and early detection of cancer and should be aware of the common knowledge gaps and perceived bar riers among older adults. Objectives: The goal of the current research was to investigate personal characteristics, perceived barriers, and be liefs related to cancer awareness in older adults, with a special focus on perceptions about the influence of cancer risk factors, knowledge of cancer symptoms, and anticipated help-seeking. Design: Descriptive cross-sectional study. Participants: Participants were 1213 older adults (≥65 years old) from the representative national Onco barometer survey conducted in 2020 in Spain. Methods: Questions on the perceived influence of cancer risk factors, knowledge of cancer symptoms, and the Span ish version of the Awareness and Beliefs about Cancer (ABC) questionnaire were administered in computer-assisted telephone interviews. Results: Knowledge of cancer risk factors and symptoms was strongly related to personal characteristics and was lim ited among males and older individuals. Respondents from lower socio-economic background recognized fewer can cer symptoms. Having personal or family history of cancer had opposite effects on cancer awareness: It was related to more accurate symptom knowledge but also to lower perceptions about the influence of risk factors and more delayed help-seeking. Anticipated help-seeking times were strongly influenced by perceived barriers to help-seeking and be liefs about cancer. Worry about wasting the doctor's time (48% increase, 95% CI [25%–75%]), about what the doctor might find (21% increase [3%–43%]) and not having enough time to go to the doctor (30% increase [5%–60%]) were related to more delayed help-seeking intentions. In contrast, beliefs that reflected higher perceived seriousness of a potential cancer diagnosis were related to shorter anticipated help-seeking times (19% decrease [5%–33%]). Conclusions: These results suggest that older adults could benefit from interventions informing them about how to re duce their cancer risk and addressing emotional barriers and beliefs associated with help-seeking delays. Nurses can contribute to educating this vulnerable group and are in a unique position to address some barriers to help-seeking. Study registration: Not registered.Cancer Observatory of the Spanish Association against Cancer (Asociacion Espanola contrael Cancer)Cancer Epidemiological Surveillance Subprogram (VICA) of the CIBER of Epidemiology and Public Health, Carlos III Health Institute, Madrid, SpainSpanish State Research Agency (MCIN/AEI) JC2019-039691-

Predicting biases in very highly educated samples: Numeracy and metacognition

We investigated the relations between numeracy and superior judgment and decision making in two large community outreach studies in Holland (n=5408). In these very highly educated samples (e.g., 30–50% held graduate degrees), the Berlin Numeracy Test was a robust predictor of financial, medical, and metacognitive task performance (i.e., lotteries, intertemporal choice, denominator neglect, and confidence judgments), independent of education, gender, age, and another numeracy assessment. Metacognitive processes partially mediated the link between numeracy and superior performance. More numerate participants performed better because they deliberated more during decision making and more accurately evaluated their judgments (e.g., less overconfidence). Results suggest that well-designed numeracy tests tend to be robust predictors of superior judgment and decision making because they simultaneously assess (1) mathematical competency and (2) metacognitive and self-regulated learning skills

Measuring Risk Literacy: The Berlin Numeracy Test

We introduce the Berlin Numeracy Test, a new psychometrically sound instrument that quickly assesses statistical numeracy and risk literacy. We present 21 studies (n=5336) showing robust psychometric discriminability across 15 countries (e.g., Germany, Pakistan, Japan, USA) and diverse samples (e.g., medical professionals, general populations, Mechanical Turk web panels). Analyses demonstrate desirable patterns of convergent validity (e.g., numeracy, general cognitive abilities), discriminant validity (e.g., personality, motivation), and criterion validity (e.g., numerical and nonnumerical questions about risk). The Berlin Numeracy Test was found to be the strongest predictor of comprehension of everyday risks (e.g., evaluating claims about products and treatments; interpreting forecasts), doubling the predictive power of other numeracy instruments and accounting for unique variance beyond other cognitive tests (e.g., cognitive reflection, working memory, intelligence). The Berlin Numeracy Test typically takes about three minutes to complete and is available in multiple languages and formats, including a computer adaptive test that automatically scores and reports data to researchers (www.riskliteracy.org). The online forum also provides interactive content for public outreach and education, and offers a recommendation system for test format selection. Discussion centers on construct validity of numeracy for risk literacy, underlying cognitive mechanisms, and applications in adaptive decision support

Health professionals prefer to communicate risk-related numerical information using “1-in-X” ratios

Previous research showed that format effects such as the “1-in-X” effect – whereby “1-in-X” ratios lead to a higher perceived probability than “N-in-N*X” ratios – alter perceptions of medical probabilities. We do not know, however, how prevalent this effect is in practice – whether health professionals often use “1-in-X” ratios. We assembled four different sources of evidence, involving experimental work and corpus studies, to examine the use of “1-in-X” and other numerical formats quantifying probability. Our results revealed that the use of “1-in-X” ratios is prevalent and that health professionals prefer this format compared with other numerical formats (i.e., the “N-in-N*X”, %, and decimal formats). In Study 1, UK family physicians preferred to communicate prenatal risk using a “1-in-X” ratio (80.4%, n = 131) across different risk levels and regardless of patients’ numeracy levels. In Study 2, a sample from the UK adult population (n = 203), reported that most GPs (60.6%) preferred to use “1-in-X” ratios compared with other formats. In Study 3, “1-in-X” ratios were the most commonly used format in a set of randomly sampled drug leaflets describing the risk of side effects (100%, n = 94). In Study 4, the “1-in-X” format was the most commonly used numerical expression of medical probabilities or frequencies on the UK’s NHS website (45.7%, n = 2,469 sentences). The prevalent use of “1-in-X” ratios magnifies the chances of increased subjective probability. Further research should establish clinical significance of the “1-in-X” effect

El procesamiento de compuestos estimulares en juicios de causalidad

Nuestra investigación se centra en el estudio del aprendizaje de relaciones causales en las que un compuesto estimular es una causa fiable de un efecto. En dos experimentos, hemos contrastado las predicciones derivadas de los Modelos Asociativos de Rescorla y Wagner (1972) y Pearce (1994), y los Modelos Inductivos de Cheng y Novick (1992) y Novick y Cheng (2004). En claro contraste con la investigación previa sobre este tema, en nuestros experimentos, hemos utilizado una tarea de juicios de causalidad en la que la información sobre la presencia/ausencia de las causas potenciales y el efecto se presentó mediante muestras o agrupaciones de casos. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que los mecanismos de aprendizaje involucrados en el procesamiento de compuestos podrían ser de origen asociativo.Our research focuses on learning about causal relationships between events when a candidate cause is a compound integrated by several individual causes. In two experiments, we compared the predictions of the Associative Models of Rescorla and Wagner (1972) and Pearce (1994), the Inductive Models of Cheng and Novick (1992) and Novick and Cheng (2004). In contrast with previous research about this topic, in these experiments, a causality judgments task was used in which the information about the presence/absence of the causes and the effect was presented through small samples of cases. Our results showed that the learning mechanisms involved in compound cue processing could be associative in origin