Positive Thinking and Social Perceptions of a Male vs. Female Peer's Cancer Experience

Positive thinking (PT; i.e., sustaining positive thoughts and suppressing negative thoughts to "fight" cancer) is often equated with direct control over one's cancer trajectory. It was determined whether PT exposure enhanced the effort, control, and responsibility attributions ascribed to a peer for his/her cancer trajectory, and whether those ascriptions varied as a function of the peer's or participant's gender. Within a hypothetical online blog, a peer described a personal experience with bone cancer. Undergraduate participants (N = 630) were randomly administered one of 12 experimental conditions that varied in terms of the peer's gender, PT exposure, and cancer outcome. MANCOVA results indicated that PT exposure enhanced the effort, control, and responsibility attributions assigned to the peer for an unsuccessful cancer outcome, regardless of the peer's or participant's gender. Moreover, the male peer was perceived as more accountable for still having cancer but the female peer received more "credit" for being cancer-free. The notion of PT may contribute to overestimating cancer patients' personal influence over their disease trajectory and social perceptions of successful or unsuccessful cancer outcomes vary as a function of the patient's gender.