ArticlePsychonomic bulletin & review2021
The more, the merrier: Treatment frequency influences effectiveness perception and further treatment choice.
Article in Psychonomic bulletin & review, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- The tendency to stop collecting information is linked to illusions of causality.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Causal illusions have been postulated as cognitive mediators of pseudoscientific beliefs, which, in turn, might lead to the use of pseudomedicines. However, while the laboratory tasks aimed to explore causal illusions typically present participants with information regarding the consequences of administering a fictitious treatment versus not administering any treatment, real-life decisions frequently involve choosing between several alternative treatments. In order to mimic these realistic conditions, participants in two experiments received information regarding the rate of recovery when each of two different fictitious remedies were administered. The fictitious remedy that was more frequently administered was given higher effectiveness ratings than the low-frequency one, independent of the absence or presence of information about the spontaneous recovery rate. Crucially, we also introduced a novel dependent variable that involved imagining new occasions in which the ailment was present and asking participants to decide which treatment they would opt for. The inclusion of information about the base rate of recovery significantly influenced participants' choices. These results imply that the mere prevalence of popular treatments might make them seem particularly effective. It also suggests that effectiveness ratings should be interpreted with caution as they might not accurately reflect real treatment choices. Materials and datasets are available at the Open Science Framework [https://osf.io/fctjs/].
Indexed as
Identifiers
33123843What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.