Caring and dominance affect participants' perceptions and behaviors during a virtual medical visit.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Physician communication style affects patients' perceptions and behaviors. Two aspects of physician communication style, caring and dominance, are often related in that a high caring physician is usually not dominant and vice versa.

Objective

This research was aimed at testing the sole or joint impact of physician caring and physician dominance on participant perceptions and behavior during the medical visit.

Participants and design

In an experimental design, analog patients (APs) (167 university students) interacted with a computer-generated virtual physician on a computer screen. Participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 experimental conditions (physician communication style: high dominance and low caring, high dominance and high caring, low dominance

SUBMITTER: Schmid Mast M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2324145 | biostudies-literature | 2008 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature