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Lay beliefs about risk: relation to risk behaviors and to probabilistic risk perceptions

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Abstract

Lay illness risk beliefs are commonly held philosophies about how risk works. These include beliefs that one’s personal illness risk is unknowable and beliefs that thinking about one’s risk can actually increase that risk. Beliefs about risk may impact risk behaviors and thereby subsequent health status. However, limited research examines the relation between lay risk beliefs and health behavior. This paper explores this possible relation. A nationally representative sample of adults (N = 1005) recruited from an internet panel were surveyed about lay risk beliefs and risk perceptions regarding diabetes and colorectal cancer, psychosocial factors (i.e., health literacy, need for cognition, locus of control), demographics, and current health behaviors (i.e., cigarette smoking, red meat intake, physical activity). In separate sets of regressions controlling for either demographics, psychosocial factors, or risk perceptions, lay risk beliefs remained significantly related to health behaviors. It may be important to consider how to address lay risk beliefs in intervention content and targeting in order to increase adaptive health behaviors and thereby prevent chronic disease.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from the National Cancer Institute (R01CA197351, MPIs: Orom & Hay). Partial support for K.E.R. was funded in part through a cancer center support grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under award number P30 CA008748. This grant supports the Behavioral Research Methods Core Facility, which was used for completing this study. K.E.R. was also supported by a training grant from the NCI under Award Number T32 CA009461.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, 152 Frelinghuysen Rd, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA

    Kristen E. Riley

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, 641 Lexington Ave, 7th Floor, New York, NY, 10022, USA

    Jennifer L. Hay, Elizabeth Schofield & Yuelin Li

  3. Washington University in St. Louis, Saint Louis, MO, USA

    Erika A. Waters

  4. Community Connections of New York, Inc., Buffalo, NY, USA

    Caitlin Biddle

  5. University of Buffalo- State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Heather Orom

  6. University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, USA

    Marc T. Kiviniemi

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Correspondence to Kristen E. Riley or Jennifer L. Hay.

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Kristen E. Riley, Jennifer L. Hay, Erika A. Waters, Caitlin Biddle, Elizabeth Schofield, Yuelin Li, Heather Orom, and Marc T. Kiviniemi do not report any conflicts of interest, financial or otherwise.

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All procedures followed were in accordance with ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional and national) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all patients for being included in the study.

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Riley, K.E., Hay, J.L., Waters, E.A. et al. Lay beliefs about risk: relation to risk behaviors and to probabilistic risk perceptions. J Behav Med 42, 1062–1072 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10865-019-00036-1

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