How Doctors' Disclosures Increase Patient Anxiety

Abstract:     
Disclosure is often advocated as a potential solution to conflicts of interest. Yet, in two experiments we show that disclosure of a doctor’s financial, or non-financial, conflict of interest has an adverse effect on the doctor-patient relationship. Disclosure puts the patient in an effective bind: it decreases trust in a doctor’s advice while simultaneously increasing discomfort to turn down the doctor’s advice due to the patients’ desire to avoid signaling distrust to their doctor. We show that the discomfort remains even when disclosure is required by law and the patient feels similar discomfort if the conflict disclosed is small or large. We also demonstrate that the discomfort is reduced if the disclosure if provided by an external source rather than directly from the advisor.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 27

Keywords: conflicts of interest, disclosure, transparency, medical, advice, ethics, regulation

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