Speed of risk perception is connected to how information is arranged

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have studied how nurses perceive words showing high and low risk ailments. They looked for directional bias, e.g. whether words denoting lower (higher) risk led to a quicker response when placed on the left (right) side or vice versa. They found faster response for significantly higher or lower risk, but different people had different directional biases. Their findings might inform better ways to present clinical information.

With every incoming medical emergency, nurses are required to assess acute deterioration risks both accurately and quickly. Yet, there is much we don’t know about how human beings, let alone medical professionals, perceive and gauge risk from written information. Any edge we can gain in honing the efficiency with which nursing professionals read and digest information on a daily basis may mean better medical care, and lives saved.

A team consisting of Ryo Hishiya and Professor Masami Ishihara from Tokyo Metropolitan University have been studying how the arrangement of information in space (e.g. left or right) can affect how we perceive that information. Previous studies have demonstrated what is known as the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect. Imagine an experiment where people are presented with a reference number, and two horizontally aligned buttons, one labelled “higher,” the other “lower.” When a different number flashes up, they are asked to press the correct button relating the new number to the reference. When the number is lower, it turns out that people respond faster when the “lower” button is on the left. Similar studies have been run using musical pitch, loudness of a sound, weight, or dates. There is a biased spatial aspect to how we perceive quantity. The effect has even been seen in birds and insects.

Now, the team looked at whether such effects carry over into relative perception of risk. Nurses participating in the study were asked to do the same, only now, the reference was a medical condition (“prostate cancer”). When other conditions were displayed, they were asked to press the correct button showing whether the new condition was higher or lower in terms of acute deterioration risk.

It turns out that the risk perception version of this effect, called Spatial-Risk Association of Response Codes (SRARC) by the team, is present for individuals, but different individuals have biases in different directions (either left-to-right or right-to-left for lower-to-higher risk). Their results showed clearly that nurses have a faster response when the new condition is significantly different from the reference (a “distance” effect), but it seems the “preferred direction” of the responses was split into two camps.

The team say that more work is needed to really understand how this reflects how human beings process risk. But they have their sights set on other important aims: as the first author of the study is a qualified nurse, the team are striving to ensure that their new insights might be applied to create a safer, more effective clinical environment.

This work was supported by the JST SPRING Program.

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