BELIEFS ABOUT PHYSICIANS - THEIR ROLE IN HEALTH-CARE UTILIZATION, SATISFACTION, AND COMPLIANCE

Although the most prominent social psychological models of health beha vior are expectancy based, little attention has been paid to the role of individuals' beliefs about physicians in the utilization and evalua tion of health care. Three studies suggest that individuals' beliefs a bout whether physicians should adopt an authoritarian or egalitarian r ole in health care interactions are related to health care utilization , satisfaction, and compliance. In Study 1, we found that authoritaria n role expectations were associated with more self-reported visits to medical professionals in a sample of college undergraduates. In Study 2, we examined a sample of elderly outpatients and found that authorit arian beliefs were associated with objective indicators of greater hea lth care utilization. In Study 3, we had undergraduates with authorita rian or egalitarian role expectations read a vignette in which a physi cian displayed either an authoritarian or egalitarian communication st yle. Although all subjects reported greater liking for the egalitarian than the authoritarian physician, egalitarian belief subjects reporte d being particularly dissatisfied with the authoritarian physician and reported particularly weak intentions of following the authoritarian physician's treatment prescriptions. These results suggest that indivi duals' subjective beliefs about medical professionals are an important determinant of health-related behaviors and perceptions.