Reducing Communication Apprehension for New Patients Through Information Found Within Physicians’ Biographies

Abstract

This study investigated whether state communication apprehension (CA) with physicians, for high CA patients, can be reduced before consultations by manipulating information found within physicians’ online biographies. Participants were presented with three experimentally manipulated physician biographies and asked to choose which physician they would want to visit to get a hypothetical ailment checked out. Guided by uncertainty reduction theory, results support a path model where increases in perceived similarities between a patient and doctor led to greater uncertainty reduction, greater liking, and subsequent reductions in CA with the physician for high CA participants. In addition, the majority of participants decided to visit the physician with whom they perceived the greatest similarity. The importance of reducing CA in the medical context is discussed, as well as theoretical implications for communication researchers. The results also provide practical guidance for health care systems to help improve their current physician biographical offerings available to prospective patients.

Notes

¹Hypotheses 1 through 3 are only proposed for high-CA participants because of the threat of restriction-in-range.

²State CA with physicians was normally distributed among participants. Therefore, the standard convention of trichotomizing participants was employed. Subjects scoring more than one standard deviation above the mean (M = 4.08, SD = 1.4) were classified as high-CA, while subjects scoring more than one standard deviation below the mean were classified as low-CA.