"General Risk Propensity, General Risk Perception, and the Framing Effect in Medical Decision Making"

Suboptimal medical decisions regarding the course of treatment may incur substantial extra expenses to both individuals and the healthcare community. Medical decision making is one of the most sensitive areas of decision making. The way a course of treatment is framed influences the choice of treatment by the physician. Generally, the way a problem is formulated or framed changes the amount of risk associated with the problem and causes the framing effect. Therefore, the framing effect threatens rational decision making when the goal is to make an optimal decision. According to Prospect Theory, framing may change the risk associated to gain and loss. In this article, the relationships among individual risk-taking characteristics of the physician and the framing effect are evaluated. The results of our study shows that doctors with higher risk propensity have lower perceptions of risk. Moreover, we showed that the general risk perception influences the salience of the framing effect in medical decision mak...