Belief, Knowledge and Expertise. The emergence of the lay expert in medical sociology

The paper has three main aims. First, to trace – through the pages of the Journal – the changing ways in which lay understandings of health and illness have been represented during the 1979-2002 period. Second, to say something about the limits of lay knowledge (and particularly lay expertise) in matters of health and medicine. Third, to call for a re-assessment of what lay people can offer to a democratised and customer sensitive system of health care and to attempt to draw a boundary around the domain of expertise. In following through on those aims, the author calls upon data derived from three current projects. These latter concern the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in people with Down’s syndrome; the development of an outcome measure for people who have suffered a traumatic brain injury; and a study of why older people might reject annual influenza vaccinations. Key words: Lay health beliefs, lay expertise, Alzheimer’s, Traumatic Brain Injury, Vaccinations

Contextualism as an important facet of individualism-collectivism: personhood beliefs across 37 national groups

Beliefs about personhood are understood to be a defining feature of individualism-collectivism (I-C), but they have been insufficiently explored, given the emphasis of research on values and self-construals. We propose the construct of contextualism, referring to beliefs about the importance of context in understanding people, as a facet of cultural collectivism. A brief measure was developed and refined across 19 nations (Study 1: N = 5,241), showing good psychometric properties for cross-cultural use and correlating well at the nation level with other supposed facets and indicators of I-C. In Study 2 (N = 7,623), nation-level contextualism predicted ingroup favoritism, corruption and differential trust of ingroup and outgroup members, while controlling for other facets of I-C, across 34 nations. We conclude that contextualism is an important part of cultural collectivism. This highlights the importance of beliefs alongside values and self-representations, and contributes to a wider understanding of cultural processes.

Talking about the genes for cancer. A study of lay and professional knowledge of cancer genetics

This paper is concerned with the ways in which people who work in and use a cancer genetics clinic in the UK talk about the ‘gene for cancer’. By conceptualising such a gene as a boundary object, and using empirical data derived from clinic consultations, observations in a genetics laboratory and interviews with patients, the author seeks to illustrate how the various parties involved adopt different discursive strategies to appropriate, describe and understand what is apparently the ‘same’ thing. The consequent focus on the ways in which the rhetorical and syntactical features of lay and professional talk interlink and diverge, illustrates not merely how our contemporary knowledge of genes and genetics is structured, but also how different publics position themselves with respect to the biochemistry of life.

Comparison of elicitation methods for moral and affective beliefs in the theory of planned behaviour

Although the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) has been applied successfully in the area of food choice, it has been criticized for its pure utilitarian approach to the factors determining behaviour. Despite the increase in predictive power of the model with added components such as affective attitude and moral and ethical concerns, in most studies the elicitation process still only addresses people's utilitarian beliefs about the behaviour with little attention paid to other aspects. This study compares the traditional method of elicitation of advantages and disadvantages with two other methods (word association and open-ended) in the elicitations of beliefs, attitudes and moral concerns in relation to the consumption of organic foods. Results show the traditional method to be best for eliciting cognitive beliefs, open-ended emotion task for eliciting emotional beliefs and open-ended beliefs task best for moral concerns. The advantages and disadvantages of each method are discussed.

Valuing the cultural monuments of Armenia: Bayesian updating of prior beliefs in contingent valuation

The most appropriate way to measure the social benefits of conserving built cultural heritage sites is to ask the beneficiaries of conservation interventions how much they would be willing to pay for them. We use contingent valuation - a survey-based approach that elicits willingness to pay (WTP) directly from individuals - to estimate the benefits of a nationwide conservation of built cultural heritage sites in Armenia. The survey was administered to Armenian nationals living in Armenia, and obtained extensive information about the respondents' perceptions of the current state of conservation of monuments in Armenia, described the current situation, presented a hypothetical conservation program, elicited WTP for it, and queried individuals about what they thought would happen to monument sites in the absence of the government conservation program. We posit that respondents combined the information about the fate of monuments provided by the questionnaire with their prior beliefs, and that WTP for the good, or program, is likely to be affected by these updated beliefs. We propose a Bayesian updating model of prior beliefs, and empirically implement it with the data from our survey. We found that uncertainty about what would happen to monuments in the absence of the program results in lower WTP amounts. © 2008 Pion Ltd and its Licensors.

Once a Criminal, Always a Criminal?: ‘Redeemability’ and the Psychology of Punitive Public Attitudes

Several studies have sought to link punitive public attitudes to attribution style and/or lay theories of crime. This research finds that those who believe criminal acts are the result of freely chosen and willful behavior are more likely to be punitive than those who feel crime is the result of external circumstances and constraints. These analyses focus on only one dimension of attributions: locus of control (internal/external). In this analysis, we include a second dimension, thought to be a better predictor of attitudes in social psychological research: stability/instability. In addition to measuring lay theories of crime causation, we also test for “belief in redeemability” (or beliefs about the ability of deviants to change their ways). Our hypothesis is that this other dimension of personal attributions (stability/instability) may be as critical in explaining support for highly punitive criminal justice policies as beliefs about criminal responsibility. We find evidence supportive of this model in an analysis of data from postal survey of residents of six areas in England.