Perceived importance of affective forecasting in cancer treatment decision making

Abstract

Purpose

To examine whether adults with cancer view affective forecasting as important for treatment decisions, and to examine these perceptions among key subgroups.

Design

Adults with cancer (N = 376) completed a cross-sectional survey that included demographic and clinical characteristics, the IPIP five-factor personality measure, and a rating of the perceived importance of affective forecasting for cancer treatment decisions. Descriptive statistics characterized the importance of affective forecasting. Multivariate analyses examined whether health and personality variables were associated with affective forecasting importance.

Findings

Most participants (89.6%) identified affective forecasting as important for treatment decisions. Affective forecasting was more likely to be rated as important among patients with prostate cancer (p < .001), patients lower in neuroticism (p = .02), and patients higher in agreeableness (p = .004).

Conclusions/Implications: Patients believe it is important to understand how treatments will impact their emotional well-being. Oncology clinicians should discuss with patients these consequences during healthcare decision-making.

Keywords:

• Cancer
• decision making
• emotions
• forecasting
• neuroticism
• oncology
• personality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Psychiatry Leonard F. Salzman Research Award, T32MH018911 from the National Institute of Mental Health, U54GM104940 from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, and U54MD007595 from the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities.