TY - JOUR
T1 - Attitudes and stereotypes in lung cancer versus breast cancer
AU - Sriram, N.
AU - Mills, Jennifer
AU - Lang, Edward
AU - Dickson, Holli K.
AU - Hamann, Heidi A.
AU - Nosek, Brian A.
AU - Schiller, Joan H.
N1 - Funding Information:
N. Sriram had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. The study was sponsored by Genentech, Inc.; the sponsor provided support in the form of salaries for authors JM, EL, and HD, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Third-party writing assistance for this manuscript was provided by Christopher M. Brown, PhD of CodonMedical, an Ashfield Company, and was funded by Genentech, Inc.
Funding Information:
N. Sriram reports receiving consulting fees for analyzing study results from Genentech, Inc. J. Mills, E. Lang, and H. Dickson are now or were employees of Genentech, Inc. when this work was produced. H. Hamann has received grant funding from the National Lung Cancer Partnership. B. Nosek has received grant funding from Genentech, Inc. relevant to the conduct of this study, and personal fees from Project Implicit, outside the scope of the submitted work. J. Schiller is President of the National Lung Cancer Partnership (uncompensated) and has received consulting fees from Genentech, Inc. The authors note that one or more of the authors have an affiliation to the commercial funders of this research study (Genentech, Inc.). This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Sriram 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.
PY - 2015/12/1
Y1 - 2015/12/1
N2 - Societal perceptions may factor into the high rates of nontreatment in patients with lung cancer. To determine whether bias exists toward lung cancer, a study using the Implicit Association Test method of inferring subconscious attitudes and stereotypes from participant reaction times to visual cues was initiated. Participants were primarily recruited from an online survey panel based on US census data. Explicit attitudes regarding lung and breast cancer were derived from participants' ratings (n = 1778) regarding what they thought patients experienced in terms of guilt, shame, and hope (descriptive statements) and from participants' opinions regarding whether patients ought to experience such feelings (normative statements). Participants' responses to descriptive and normative statements about lung cancer were compared with responses to statements about breast cancer. Analyses of responses revealed that the participants were more likely to agree with negative descriptive and normative statements about lung cancer than breast cancer (P<0.001). Furthermore, participants had significantly stronger implicit negative associations with lung cancer compared with breast cancer; mean response times in the lung cancer/negative conditions were significantly shorter than in the lung cancer/positive conditions (P<0.001). Patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, and members of the general public had comparable levels of negative implicit attitudes toward lung cancer. These results show that lung cancer was stigmatized by patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and the general public. Further research is needed to investigate whether implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes affect patient care.
AB - Societal perceptions may factor into the high rates of nontreatment in patients with lung cancer. To determine whether bias exists toward lung cancer, a study using the Implicit Association Test method of inferring subconscious attitudes and stereotypes from participant reaction times to visual cues was initiated. Participants were primarily recruited from an online survey panel based on US census data. Explicit attitudes regarding lung and breast cancer were derived from participants' ratings (n = 1778) regarding what they thought patients experienced in terms of guilt, shame, and hope (descriptive statements) and from participants' opinions regarding whether patients ought to experience such feelings (normative statements). Participants' responses to descriptive and normative statements about lung cancer were compared with responses to statements about breast cancer. Analyses of responses revealed that the participants were more likely to agree with negative descriptive and normative statements about lung cancer than breast cancer (P<0.001). Furthermore, participants had significantly stronger implicit negative associations with lung cancer compared with breast cancer; mean response times in the lung cancer/negative conditions were significantly shorter than in the lung cancer/positive conditions (P<0.001). Patients, caregivers, healthcare providers, and members of the general public had comparable levels of negative implicit attitudes toward lung cancer. These results show that lung cancer was stigmatized by patients, caregivers, healthcare professionals, and the general public. Further research is needed to investigate whether implicit and explicit attitudes and stereotypes affect patient care.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0145715
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0145715
M3 - Article
C2 - 26698307
AN - SCOPUS:84956904545
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 10
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 12
M1 - e0145715
ER -