Medical Decision Making with Tables and Graphs: The Role of Cognition, Emotions, and Analytic Thinking

The shift from one-way to two-way communication in healthcare decision-making has heightened the need to understand the role of display formats including tables and graphs as decision aids. Accordingly, we investigate the cognitive mediators explaining how risk display formats influence the decision process, in addition to the impact of analytic thinking style and positive affect on decision quality. Specifically, we find that display format’s impact on the choice of treatment is mediated by verbatim and gist knowledge respectively, and that tables compared to bar graphs improve decision quality. We also find evidence that analytic thinking, and relatively more positive feelings towards decision - making experience can improve decision quality . Implications for better engaging patients and encouraging improved decision making are discussed.