Avoidance of anticipated regret: the ordering of prostate-specific antigen tests.

Objective: When making decisions, people are known to try to minimize the regret that would be provoked by unwanted consequences of these decisions. The authors explored the strength and determinants of such anticipated regret in a study of physicians' decisions to order prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests.

Methods: 32 US and 33 French primary care physicians indicated the likelihood they would order a PSA for 32 hypothetical men presenting for routine physical exams.

Why do primary care physicians in the United States and France order prostate-specific antigen tests for asymptomatic patients?

Purpose: To understand why many primary care physicians in the United States and France order prostate-specific antigen (PSA) tests routinely for their asymptomatic male patients despite "evidence-based" recommendations.

Methods: Thirty-two U.S.

Learning the relationship between smoking, drinking alcohol and the risk of esophageal cancer.

This study examined the effect of outcome feedback on learning the multiplicative relationship between daily intakes of tobacco and alcohol, and the risk of esophageal cancer. In the first of two experiments, 65 French adults judged the risk of esophageal cancer associated with combinations of five levels of intake of tobacco and five of wine. They made these judgments both before and after learning sessions in which they were shown the actual risk for each vignette.