Lifetime prevalence of questionable health behaviors and their psychological roots: A preregistered nationally representative survey.

Autor: Knežević G; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Petrović MB; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Ninković M; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Zupan Z; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Lukić P; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Purić D; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Živanović M; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; Faculty of Philosophy, Institute of Psychology, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Teovanović P; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; Faculty of Special Education and Rehabilitation, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Stanković S; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia., Žeželj I; Department of Psychology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.; LIRA Lab, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2024 Nov 06; Vol. 19 (11), pp. e0313173. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Nov 06 (Print Publication: 2024).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313173
Abstrakt: A growing body of evidence suggests that questionable health behaviors- not following medical recommendations and resorting to non-evidence based treatments-are more frequent than previously thought, and that they seem to have strong psychological roots. We thus aimed to: 1) document the lifetime prevalence of intentional non-adherence to medical recommendations (iNAR) and use of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) in Serbia and 2) understand how they relate to 'distal' psychological factors-personality traits and thinking dispositions, and 'proximal' factors-a set of beliefs and cognitive biases under the term 'irrational mindset'. In this preregistered cross-sectional study on a nationally representative sample (N = 1003), we observed high lifetime prevalence of iNAR (91.3%) and TCAM (99.2%). Irrational beliefs, especially magical health beliefs and medical conspiracy theories, were the strongest predictors of TCAM. They also mediated the relation between Disintegration/lower cognitive reflectiveness and TCAM. High Disintegration, and low Conscientiousness predicted iNAR directly, whilst negative experiences with the healthcare system facilitated both types of questionable health practices. The established psychological profile of people prone to questionable health behaviors and the fact they can be tracked to negative experiences with the system can be used to tailor public health communications.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2024 Knežević et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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