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Using data from the 2011 and 2015 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, this paper analyzes the relation between health perception biases and risky health behaviors among adults aged 45 and older. We compare objective health outcomes (including hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes) with perceived conditions to assess absolute health pe...
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... LE predict the time of one's death (e.g. Smith et al. 2001) and, the literature has shown that they are consistent with life tables (Hurd & McGarry 2002), even though they do exhibit some bias (Arni et al. 2021), expecially when they are compared with end-of-life data (Costa-Font & Vilaplana 2022). ...
... Hamermesh 1985, Bonsang & Costa-Font 2020, Costa-Font & Vilaplana 2022. Given that LE might be affected by attitudes and beliefs as well such as optimism and overconfidence biases (Arni et al. 2021), assessing empirically the effect of LE on health behaviours is therefore far from trivial. That is, are individuals expecting to live longer more likely to engage in protective behaviours insofar as they perceive a higher opportunity costs of early death? ...
... The effect of LE is a priori ambiguous because it may induce individuals with better health status, who can avoid being sick, to be imprudent in the presence of overconfidence and optimism biases (Arni et al. 2021, Costa-Font et al. 2009). However, we might expect healthier individuals to value more their health status, and perceiving a larger-than-the-average opportunity cost of engaging in limited protective behaviours. ...
Longevity expectations (LE) are subjective assessments of future health status that can influence a number of individual health protective decisions. This is especially true during a pandemic such as COVID-19, as the risk of ill health depends more than ever on such protective decisions. This paper exploits differences in LE to examine the causal effect of LE on protective health behaviours and a number of decisions around access to health care, using data from the Survey of Health Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We draw on an instrumental variable strategy exploiting individual level information on parental age at death. Consistent with the too healthy to be sick hypothesis, we find that individuals with higher expected longevity are more likely to engage in protective behaviours, and are less likely to forgo medical treatment. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in expected longevity increases the probability to comply always with social distancing by 0.6%, to meet people less often by 0.4% and decreases the probability to forgo any medical treatment by 0.6%. Our estimates vary depending on the availability of health care, as well as individuals’ gender and pre-existing health conditions.
... On the other hand, the same individuals might engage in activity or behaviour detrimental to health and thus end up in the hospital more often. For example, individuals who overestimate their mobility are more prone to fall-induced injuries (Sakurai et al., 2013) and risky health behaviours such as drinking alcohol daily or eating unhealthily (Arni et al., 2021). Similarly, individuals who underestimate their health may overutilise healthcare services by seeking care and purchasing relatively more medication when it is not necessary-at least in the short run. ...
... Moreover, the limited research available suggests that perception biases are particularly relevant for health, as they can directly affect risk for accident and injury (Preston and Harris, 1965;Sakurai et al., 2013) and have serious long-lasting effects on wellbeing and mortality. Recent work in this domain also shows that overconfidence is related to engagement in risky health behaviours (Arni et al., 2021), mental health (Nie et al., 2022), and adaptive behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic (Spitzer et al., 2022). ...
... The contribution of this study is twofold. First, we contribute to the growing literature that explores individuals' heatlh misperception (Beaudoin and Desrichard, 2011;Coman and Richardson, 2006;Furnham, 2001), analyses heterogeneities (Spitzer and Weber, 2019), and assesses its relationship with outcomes such as health behaviours (Arni et al., 2021;Spitzer et al., 2022). This literature reports variation in health misperception by sociodemographic characteristics like as age (Crossley and Kennedy, 2001;Oksuzyan et al., 2019;Srisurapanont et al., 2017), gender (Merrill et al., 1997;Schneider et al., 2012), country of residence (Capistrant et al., 2014;Spitzer and Weber, 2019), education (Black et al., 2017), and race (Jackson et al., 2017). ...
Health misperception can have serious consequences on health. Despite their relevance, the role of such biases in determining healthcare utilisation is severely underexplored. Here we study the relationship between health perception and doctor visits for the population 50+ in Europe. We conceptualise health misperception as arising from either overconfidence or underconfidence, where overconfidence is measured as overestimation of health and underconfidence is measured as underestimation of health. Comparing objective performance measures and their self-reported equivalents from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe, we find that individuals who overestimate their health visit the doctor 17.0% less often than individuals who correctly assess their health, which is crucial for preventive care such as screenings. In contrast, individuals who underestimate their health visit the doctor more often (21.4% more). Effects are similar for dentist visits, but we find no effects on hospital stays. The results are robust to several sensitivity tests and, more important, to various conceptualisations of the health perception measure.
Background: In low- and middle-income countries with a high tuberculosis burden, a large fraction of people who are tested for TB do not return to the health facility to collect their test results and initiate treatment, thus putting themselves at increased risk of adverse outcomes.
Methods: Our prospective study aimed to identify predictors of returning to the Primary Health Care facility to collect TB test results. From 15 August to 15 December 2017, we surveyed 1105 people who tested for pulmonary TB at three Cape Town PHC facilities. Using multivariate logistic regressions on an analysis sample of 1097 people, we considered three groups of predictors: (i) demographics, health and socioeconomic status (ii) costs and benefits and (iii) behavioural factors.
Results: We estimate that 44% of those tested return to the PHC facility to collect their test results within the stipulated two days and 68% returned before the end of the study period. Return was strongly and positively correlated with expecting a TB positive result, cognitive avoidance and postponement behaviour.
Conclusion: Interventions to improve pre-treatment loss to follow-up should target those who think they do not have TB and those with a history of postponement behaviour and cognitive avoidance.
Psychological factors are important for the prevention of disease. This study aims to identify the psychological perceptions of people who are ignoring the warnings of novel COVID-19 infection. A qualitative content analysis was carried out from May to July 2020. The interviewees were selected purposefully from Isfahan, Iran. The saturation point was achieved in 20 semi-structured interviews. The thematic analysis approach was used to analyze the transcribed documents using MAXQDA software (version 12).The results revealed 2 themes and 6 sub-themes related to the psychological beliefs of individuals with no attention to corona alerts. Themes and sub-themes included Biased cognitive processing (biased beliefs, attention biases, metacognitive beliefs and Depressogenic schemata), low compassion, and empathy for oneself and others (Negative Emotions towards Oneself, low altruism). To ensure a positive attitude towards precautionary measures in society, the thoughts, perceptions, and behaviors of people who ignore coronavirus alerts need to be changed. This is achieved through the use of mass media and virtual networks, by encouraging people to change their negative attitude towards the use of preventive measures, individual and social protection campaigns, and by fostering a sense of responsibility.
In 2017 the Italian government established the Fund to Finance Basic Research Activities – FFABR – with the purpose of assigning a 3,000-euro research grant to the most productive applicants among eligible assistant and associate professors. We show that many low-productivity researchers applied to the program while many high-productivity ones did not. Our evidence from both a simple structural model of program participation estimated on registry data, and a survey of the eligible population suggests that high-productivity researchers under-estimate their own position in the productivity distribution relative to the assignment threshold, while the opposite holds for low-productivity ones.
This paper investigates if and how time preferences are related to beliefs regarding one’s own future outcomes. We measure overconfident beliefs using the difference between an individual’s expected position and their observed percentile in the distribution of monthly gross wages one year after our survey. Our regression exercises link this bias measure to information about patience, conditioning on risk preferences, personality traits, cognitive ability, and the individual’s socio-economic status. On average, we find that greater patience is associated with lower overplacement in the future distribution of individual monthly gross wages.
This paper tests an intervention aimed at facilitating (cognitively) the adoption of healthy dietary habits. We provide easy-to-understand information about the risks of developing diabetes or heart diseases and give easy-to-follow dietary recommendations to minimize these risks. We implement two variations, one consisting of generic information, the other consisting of information tailored to the individual, the latter resembling newly developed on-line health assessment tools. On top of the information treatment, we implement a second experimental variation encouraging people to spend more time thinking about their decisions. We find evidence that the information intervention leads to healthier choices in the short run, but mostly in the generic treatment. Surprisingly, we find that people are on average pessimistic about their health, and therefore receive good news on average when the information is tailored to them. We find no evidence that increasing the time available to make choices leads to healthier choices, and find no evidence of long-term changes in habits. These results do not support a bounded rationality explanation for poor dietary choices.
