Judgment processes for medication acceptance: self-reports and configural information use

In the present study college student (N = 186) made judgments of the likelihood of accepting a medication for treatment of a hypothetically experienced clinical depression. Three types of information were manipulated: effectiveness of the medication for alleviating the symptoms of depression, potential side effects of the medication, and severity of depression hypothetically being experienced. The functional-measurement approach was used to examine whether self-reports are related to judgments and whether there is configurality in judging likelihood of medication acceptance. The results showed that subjects who reported different variables to be most important had predictably different effects of the variables in their judgments. There was also evidence for configural combination of information, and the nature of the configurality differed between subjects who reported Depression versus Side Effects as the most important type of information, respectively. The results show how the same information can be used differently by different individuals in making judgments, and that self-reports may reveal some important aspects of how information is used. The implications of the individual differences for health care consumer decision making and health care professionals' assessments and interventions are discussed.