Do patients suffering from chronic diseases retrospectively overestimate how healthy they were before they fell ill?

Background/Objective: To examine the impact of a disease on a person's subjective health state, patients are often asked to assess their current health state and to retrospectively assess how healthy they were before they fell ill. The objective of this study was to test whether patients generally overestimated the quality of their pre-disease health. Method: Six samples of patients with chronic diseases (cancer patients, cardiovascular patients, and patients diagnosed with sarcoidosis, N between 197 and 1,197) were analyzed. The patients assessed their current health states and their health states at the time before diagnosis. The retrospective scores were compared with matched data from general population studies. Results: In three of the six studies, the retrospective health ratings of the patients were significantly higher than the general population norms (effect sizes between 0.24 and 0.46), two studies yielded nonsignificant effects, and in one study there was an opposite trend. The general overestimation of pre-disease health was more pronounced in older patients as compared with younger ones, and it was more pronounced when global health/quality of life was to be assessed. Conclusions: Retrospective assessments of pre-disease health states are not appropriate for assessing disease-related changes in a person's health state.     

Flexible use of source information: Processing components of the inconsistency effect in person memory

The impact of social expectancies on person memory is investigated in two experiments using a source-recognition paradigm. Multinomial model analyses disentangled effects on item-memory, source-memory, and heuristic reconstructive guessing processes. Cognitive load and retention interval were manipulated. In two pilot studies and Experiment 1, participants were presented equal numbers of consistent and inconsistent statements about two stereotyped targets. Source-memory showed an inconsistency effect that is restricted to conditions with load at encoding and longer retention interval. Consistency biases in reconstructive guessing of statement-person associations emerged under load. Item-memory exhibited only a small inconsistency effect in conditions without load and short retention interval. Experiment 2 yielded similar results, although expectancies were induced on-line via the distribution of positive and negative behaviors across non-stereotyped targets. Findings support a model of flexible use of source information, demonstrate the importance of source memory, and of assessing it separately from item recognition and reconstructive guessing.     

Perspective taking as a means to overcome motivational barriers in negotiations: when putting oneself into the opponent's shoes helps to walk toward agreements

Previous negotiation research predominantly focused on psychological factors that lead to suboptimal compromises as opposed to integrative agreements. Few studies systematically analyzed factors that impact the emergence of hurtful partial impasses (i.e., nonagreements on part of the issues). The present research investigates negotiators' egoistic motivation as a determinant for the emergence of partial impasses. In addition, the authors seek to demonstrate that perspective taking serves as a powerful tool to avoid impasses and to overcome egoistic impediments. Specifically, it was predicted that within an integrative context perspective-takers succeed to exchange concessions on low- versus high-preference issues (i.e., logroll), thereby increasing their individual profits without inflicting hurtful losses upon their counterparts. Three studies were conducted to test these predictions. Study 1 reveals that whereas negotiators' egoistic motivation increases the risk of partial impasses, perspective taking alleviates this risk. Study 2 demonstrates that this beneficial effect of a perspective-taking mindset is limited to integrative negotiations and does not emerge in a distributive context, in which negotiators are constrained to achieve selfish goals by inflicting hurtful losses on their counterparts. Study 3 confirms the assumption that in an integrative context egoistic perspective-takers overcome the risk of impasses by means of logrolling. The findings of the present studies are discussed with respect to their contribution to research on negotiations, social motivation, and perspective taking.