Promoting Reflection on Medical Maximizing-Minimizing Preferences May Create Undesired Effects on Decisions About...

Medical maximizing-minimizing (MM) preferences predict a variety of medical decisions. We tested whether informing people about their MM preferences and asking them to reflect on the pros and cons of that preference would improve medical decisions when clear clinical recommendations exist.

We surveyed 1219 US adults age 40+ that were sampled to ensure a 50%/50% distribution of medical maximizers versus minimizers. Participants either received no MM feedback (Control) or received feedback about their MM type and instructions to reflect on how that MM type can be helpful in some circumstances and problematic in others (Reflection). All participants then completed five hypothetical decision scenarios regarding low-value care services (e.g., head computed tomography scan for mild concussion) and three about high-value care (e.g., flu vaccination).

There were no significant differences between the Control and Reflection groups in five of eight scenarios. In three scenarios (two low-benefit and one high-benefit), we observed small effects in the nonhypothesized direction for the MM subgroup least likely to follow the recommendation (e.g., maximizers in the Reflection group were more likely to request low-benefit care).

Asking people to reflect on their MM preferences may be a counterproductive strategy for optimizing patient decision making around quality of care.