It has to be first-hand: The effect of first-person testimonials in medical communication on recipients’ emotions and memory

Abstract

The present research systemically examines the effect of a prominent technique used in the area of medical communication and education—including testimonials in reports of medical information. Precisely, it was examined whether using the first person perspective of patients in reports on Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) as treatment of neurological diseases elicits stronger emotions in recipients than reports using the third person perspective of patients. Correspondingly, memory performance with regard to DBS-related content should be biased towards information of the same valence as the emotions elicited. Results of one experiment support these predictions. Presenting DBS-related information using testimonials (i.e. programmed patients) who report from a first person perspective elicited stronger negative emotions which, in turn, fostered memory performance regarding negative DBS-related contents compared to presenting the same information using a testimonial presenting information from a third person perspective. Practical implications for medical communication are discussed.

Keywords:

• medical communication
• medical knowledge
• narrative perspective
• emotions
• memory
• deep brain stimulation

Public Interest Statement

Testimonials, that is to say personal reports from persons concerned, are widely used in medical communication and health care intervention programs. Testimonials make medical communication more vivid and tangible thereby fostering health behavior changes. The present research systematically investigated the impact of one feature of testimonials, namely narrative perspective used in the testimonial report. One study with healthy young individuals revealed that testimonials reporting from a first-person perspective of a programmed patient regarding an invasive medical treatment (Deep Brain Stimulation) elicited stronger negative emotions in recipients regarding the treatment than testimonials reporting from a third-person perspective of a patient. Importantly, recipients’ emotions also affect what they remembered regarding the treatment; those who learned about the treatment from a first-person perspective not only had more negative emotions but also remembered more negative information regarding the treatment than those who learned about the treatment from a third-person perspective.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no competing interest.

Notes

1. For exploratory reasons, we also assessed specific emotions regarding DBS: anger (hostile, angry, annoyed; α = 0.86); threat (helpless, threatened, without control; α = 0.70; anxiety (scared, frightened, full of fear; α = 0.89), hope (hopeful, of good cheer, confident; α = 0.95), and disgust (disgusting, disgusted; r = 0.78). For anger, analyses revealed a main effect for narrative perspective, F(1, 107) = 8.28, p = 0.005, ${\mathit{\eta }}_{\text{p}}^2$ = 0.072, a main effect for valence of contents, F(1, 107) = 23.94, p < 0.001, ${\mathit{\eta }}_{\text{p}}^2$ = 0.183, as well as a marginal narrative perspective × valence of contents interaction, F(1, 107) = 3.91, p = 0.051, ${\mathit{\eta }}_{\text{p}}^2$ = 0.035. With negative contents, the first person patient perspective elicited more anger (M = 4.02, SD = 2.27) than the third person patient perspective (M = 2.54, SD = 1.61), F(1, 107) = 11.88, p = 0.001, ${\mathit{\eta }}_{\text{p}}^2$ = 0.100. In contrast, for the positive contents, there was no difference between the first person patient perspective (M = 1.93, SD = 1.27) and the third person patient perspective (M = 1.65, SD = 0.89), F(1, 107) < 1, ns. For threat, the analysis revealed a main effect for narrative perspective, F(1, 107) = 7.45, p = 0.007, ${\mathit{\eta }}_{\text{p}}^2$ = 0.065, and a main effect for valence of contents, F(1, 107) = 24.27, p < 0.001, ${\mathit{\eta }}_{\text{p}}^2$ = 0.185, but no interaction effect, F(1, 107) < 1, ns. Reports from the first person patient perspective elicited more threat (M = 4.22, SD = 2.23) than reports from the third person patient perspective (M = 3.26, SD = 1.82). Moreover, reports with negative contents elicited more threat (M = 4.61, SD = 2.01) than reports with positive contents (M = 2.87, SD = 1.80).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Claudia Sassenrath

Claudia Sassenrath is currently a lecturer at the University of Ulm. In her research, Claudia investigates how emotions affect prosocial tendencies, or basic information processing. She is also interested in applications of the basic social psychological theories to applied domains such as health psychology or health education and behavior. This is how the present research relates to her other projects—it represents an application of basic findings (the effect of emotions on memory performance) in applied health-related setting.

Kai Sassenberg

Kai Sassenberg is head of the Social Processes Lab at the Knowledge Media Research Center and full professor at the University of Tübingen. Together with his team, he studies the impact of social relationships on computer-mediated knowledge exchange and social cooperation.

Hannah Greving

Hannah Greving is working as researcher at the Knowledge Media Research Center, where she investigates biased representations in reports on Wikipedia. Prior to this, she investigated behaviors and outcomes of health-related internet searches and she also studied how emotions influence knowledge acquisition about new medical treatments.