[Monica Gerhardt]

Please provide feedback for Sticking to alternative medicine: the role of psycho-immunology

[Adina Robinson]

Very interesting research! How did you measure BPI and what was the distribution of participants for this variable?

[Mesay menebo]

Thank you Adina:)
The development of a reliable and valid measure of BPI is part-1 of this PhD project.
The BPI measure(which we systematically developed) is a 20 items scale tapping how strongly or weakly participants believe their emotional and thought components affect their illness recovery(Scale paper is coming soon as a journal article). The theoretical concept of BPI is first elaborated by Professor Thomas Gilovich. We based on that theoretical concept to develop the measure.
Out of the 20 items , we estimate a composite continous score ranging from 0(low BPI) to 1(High BPI).Regardless of participants educational background, sex and age-BPI is fairly normaly distributed among the sample. In addition, it is highly correlated with religousity. As a continuation of the scale development, we also made few experiments to check whether it could be possible to manipulate BPI by priming it. That was successful too.

Thanks 🙂

[Rebecca Reczek]

I wonder what role the type of ailment plays in these effects. Are people perhaps more likely to use these types of remedies (even in the face of failure) when faced with an incurable disease? I expect this might be the case, as doing so might give them an illusion of control over the outcome of their illness (which they may not actually be able to control). I think this is a really interesting project and think you could explore any number of interesting moderators. I would also think about the role that illusion of control might play here. It may be an alternative explanation to rule out (since you’re seeing failures attributed to the self, it may not be going on, but it would be interesting to test.

[Jenna Merry]

Thanks for post!

[Jenna Merry]

I love this recommendation of you)

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