PERSPECTIVE-TAKING JUDGMENTS OF MEDICATION ACCEPTANCE - INFERENCES FROM RELATIVE IMPORTANCE ABOUT THE IMPACT AND COMBINATION OF INFORMATION

Perspective-taking judgments of medication acceptance were studied for hypothetical mental health treatment scenarios. Three types of inform ation were manipulated in all possible subsets: level of trust in the medication prescriber, severity of the hypothetical mental health cond ition being experienced, and the potential side effects of the medicat ion. Subjects made judgments from four perspectives: self perspective and that of three other hypothetical people who were each said to plac e the most importance on one of the three cues, The results showed ind ividual differences in self-reports of the relative importance of the cues which, in turn, predicted differences in judgment patterns. Subje cts modified their cue use when making judgments from the perspectives of hypothetical others. The interaction patterns and rank orders of t he perspective-taking judgments resembled the individual differences i n judgments made from subjects' own perspectives, but the perspective- taking judgments showed extreme effects of the most important cue. The re was also some influence of subjects' own perspectives on their pers pective-taking judgments. When only a subset of the three cues was giv en, the judgment pattern depended on the importance of the cue that wa s omitted. The relative weight averaging model accounted for the judgm ents of only a minority of the subjects. Models which propose that sub jects infer the value of missing information were also unsuccessful in explaining the data of the majority. Modifications of those models ar e proposed. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.