(Mis)predicting adaptation to adverse outcomes: New evidence from the medical domain

Collaborators (partial list):•Peter Ubel, M.D.

•John Hershey, Ph.D.

•Jonathan Baron, Ph.D.

•David A. Asch, M.D., M.B.A.

•Christopher Jepson, Ph.D.

•Angela Fagerlin, Ph.D.

•Julie Lucas, B.B.A.

•Jason Riis

George Loewenstein(presentation at HDGC 1/22/03)

Adaptation

• Material (behavioral)

• Hedonic

Predictions of adaptation

General finding: people underpredict their own speed of adaptation (both negative and positive)

• Loewenstein & Frederick, 1997 (diverse, including income)

• Gilbert et al. 1998 (e.g., tenure)

• Schkade & Kahneman, 1998 (living in Cal.)

• Sieff, Dawes & Loewenstein, 1999 (reaction to HIV status)

• Wilson et al, 2000 (win or loss of team)

Application to the medical domain

(Which hopefully sheds light more broadly on adaptation, and the accuracy of

intuitions about adaptation, in diverse domains)

Most patients report a high quality of life

• Brickman, Coates, and Janoff-Bulman (1978) Surprisingly small difference in self-reported happiness (on 5 point scale) between paraplegics and matched controls:– paraplegics 2.96 – controls 3.82

• Wortman and Silver (1987): quadriplegics reported no greater frequency of negative affect than control respondents!

• Tyc (1992): “no difference in quality of life or psychiatric symptomatology” in young patients who had lost limbs to cancer compared with those who had not.

Non-patients don’t expect patients to be as happy as they report being..

Discrepancy between patients’ evaluations of their own quality of life and non-patients’ evaluations of what their quality of life would be if they had the same health conditions

Chronic dialysis (Sackett and Torrance, 1978) –Nonpatient predictions .39–Patient reports .56

Colostomies–Nonpatient predictions .80–Patient reports .92

The ‘discrepancy’

Many possible causes of the discrepancy

• Explanations that implicate non-patients– Misconstrual of medical condition?– 'Focusing illusion'– Underappreciation of adaptation

• Explanations that implicate patients– Renorming of scales– Dissonance reduction

• 'Neutral' explanations– Mismatch between subject populations?

Whether discrepancy is important for medical policy depends on its cause

• Attempts to rationalize health care delivery – Nonpatients’ evaluations of QOL serve as

inputs

• Informed consent/ patient decision making– Individual treatment decisions often based on

perceptions, by people who do not have conditions, of what it would be like to have those conditions

An illustration:

• Slevin et al., 1990: % who say they'd accept a grueling course of chemotherapy for 3 extra months of life– radiotherapists 0%– oncologists 6%– healthy persons 10%– current cancer patients 42%

• whose values to use?

Data!

Within-subject study of kidney transplant and dialysis (unpublished)

(n=127 dialysis patients who ultimately received transplants; all numbers on 0-100 quality of life scale)

Reported well-beingpre-transplant 64.16

Predicted well-beingone year later 91.19

Reported well-beingone year later 76.81

Recalled well-being 47.19

Notes: - all means significantly different from one-another- those not transplanted over-predicted their own misery

Evidence of misconstrualTable 2.

Mean scores of pre-transplant and post-transplant subjects, and pre-transplant subjects’ expectations,

on quality of life measures

Measure

Pre-transplant

current

Post-transplant

current

Pre-transplant

expectation

Hospital days in past year 9.50*

(17.67)

7.15

(10.69)

1.85****

(4.56)

Travel days in past year 6.92**

(12.49)

11.40

(23.24)

26.78****

(38.87)

Hours per week working 12.91

(18.51)

12.02

(18.35)

30.66****

(18.33)

* p < .10; ** p < .05 ; *** p < .01; **** p < .001 (all relative to post -transplant)

bad scales?

• Classic criticism is that patients renorm the scales based on their own experiences or on new points of social comparison

• But when sufferers and nonsufferers of diverse problems rated QoL with anchored or unanchored scales, anchored scales produced larger discrepancies

Baron et al., “Effect of assessment method on the discrepancy between judgments of health disorders people have and do not have.”

Study 2

• Web-based; n=99 (ages 16-68; median 36; 22% male)

• Rated series of health conditions– With vague or better-defined scale

• Vague – e.g., "100 is a very good quality of life"

• Better-defined – e.g., "100 is as good as that of someone with a meaningful job, friends, family, and good health"

– For self or other

• Then stated whether they had the condition

Conditions

•Asthma

•Back pain

•Insomnia

•Shortness

•Overweight

•Nearsightedness

•Acne

•Smoking habit

•Arthritis

•Heart disease

Study 2 results…

• Self-ratings consistently higher than other ratings

• Have/have not discrepancy was larger with better-defined scale than with vague scale

Self-deception by patients?

Jason Riis et al. (in progress)

• Palm Pilots given to 60 end stage renal patients dialysis 3 times per week.

• 28 matched (age, gender, educ., race) healthy controls• Palms carried for 7 days; beeped randomly in each

90 minute segment of day• On each beep, respondent asked 12 questions,

including…

Please tap the button below that best describes the mood you were feeling just before the Palm Pilot beeped:

2 … Very pleasant 1 … Slightly pleasant 0 … Neutral -1 … Slightly unpleasant -2 … Very unpleasant

When Palms returned, subjects estimated mood distributions on the above scale:

•Last Week (during which they carried the palm)

•Typical Week

•Dialysis Scenario•Controls: (Following presentation of a dialysis scenario … "Imagine that you had dialysis")

•Patients: As in the scenario; no other health problems.

•Other Person (Someone else your age with same health)

•Healthy•Controls: In perfect health

•Patients: If never had kidney trouble

Main results

patients nonpatients Diff?

actual mood

ave=.70

pos=58%

ave=.75

pos=65%

n.s.

n.s.

predicted

(scenario)

ave=.49

pos=54%

ave=-.01

pos=41%

p<.01

p<.12

if no dialysis

ave=.98

pos=70%

(“grass is greener”

Effect)

Conclusions so far..

• Discrepancy not due to:– mismatch between populations– scale renorming– patient misrepresentation (to self or other)

• Misconstrual may contribute

Mispredictions by nonpatients?

•focusing illusion (Kahneman & Schkade; Wilson, Gilbert et al.)

•underprediction of adaptation

Tests of focusing illusion

• Subjects in all studies were prospective Philadelphia jurors

First defocusing task: life domains

How much do you think having a below-the-knee amputation would affect:

Your overall health? Your standard of living? Your work? Your love life? Your family life? Your social life? Your spiritual side of your life? Your leisure activities, such as hobbies, pastimes, travel,

and entertainment?

Disability Ratings Before and After Defocusing Exercise

QoL Rating (0 - 100)

Disability N Before After P

Paraplegia 53

Below-knee 52amputation

58.558.5

78.178.1

51.851.8

72.372.3

0.020.02

0.010.01

Second defocusing task: concrete events

If you had below the knee amputation/paraplegia, what would your experience of these things be like compared to now?

visiting with friends and/or family visiting with friends and/or family paying bills and taxes paying bills and taxes vacation and travel vacation and travel getting caught in traffic getting caught in traffic physical recreational activities physical recreational activities arguing with family and/or friends arguing with family and/or friends reading and/or watching TV or movies reading and/or watching TV or movies coping with death and/or illness in the family coping with death and/or illness in the family

Concrete Events Defocusing: Results

QoL Rating (0 - 100)

Disability N Before After P

Paraplegia 50

Paraplegia 51

BKA 51

BKA 51

5555

--

7171

--

5151

4545

7272

6767

.41.41

.05.05

.27.27

.34.34

Third defocusing task: time weighted

• “Think about the past day, starting from when you woke up yesterday to when you woke up this morning. What did you do yesterday? In the spaces provided, we would like you to list the things that took up the most amount of time from yesterday when you woke up to today when you woke up.”

• Subjects were asked to imagine how these five activities would be affected if they had the disability in question.

Time Weighted Defocusing Results

QoL Rating (0 - 100)

Disability N Before After P

Paraplegia 57

Paraplegia 60

BKA 53

BKA 54

5151

--

7575

--

5050

4545

7474

6767

.59.59

.23.23

.60.60

.08.08

Fourth Defocusing Task: Changes for Better or Worse

• To get subjects to think more broadly about disabilities

• We asked them to think about aspects of their live that would probablychange for the better be unchanged change for the worse

Changes Results

QoL Rating (0 - 100)

Disability N Before After P

Paraplegia 105Paraplegia 105 53 53 55 55 .09.09

Paraplegia 103Paraplegia 103 -- -- 57 57 .46.46

BKA 117BKA 117 75 75 75 75 .31.31

BKA 106BKA 106 -- -- 73 73 .29.29

Are Disability Ratings Influenced by Failure to Consider Adaptation?

Adaptation exercise Think about one emotionally difficult life

experience that happened to you at least 6 months prior to now

At the end of those 6 months would say you felt Much worse About the same

Much better than you would have predicted

Adaptation Results

QoL Rating (0 - 100)

Disability N Before After P

Paraplegia 123

Paraplegia 56

4747

--

5252

6262

.003.003

.001.001

Should we not care about environmental

change (or forget about road safety)? •knowledge of these results has little effect on willingness to pay, etc.. (we may not understand why, but there may be a good reason)

•happiness/quality of life matters, but doesn't include everything we care about..

o quantity and quality of well-being (Skorupski)

o children

o hitchhiking

o mountaineering