Perceptions of Control Over Different Causes of Death and the Accuracy of Risk Estimations

Abstract

Background: A large number of deaths could be avoided by improving health behaviours. The degree to which people invest in their long-term health is influenced by how much they believe they can control their risk of death. Identifying causes of death believed to be uncontrollable, but likely to occur, may provide actionable targets for health interventions to increase control beliefs and encourage healthier behaviours. Method: We recruited a nationally representative online sample of 1,500 participants in the UK. We assessed perceived control, perceived personal likelihood of death, certainty of risk estimation, and perceived knowledge for 20 causes of death. We also measured overall perceived uncontrollable mortality risk (PUMR), and perceived prevalence for each of the Office for National Statistics’ categories of avoidable death. Findings: Risk of death due to cancer was considered highly likely to occur but largely beyond individual control. Cardiovascular disease was considered moderately controllable and a likely cause of death. Drugs and alcohol were perceived as risks both high in control and low in likelihood of death. However, perceptions of control over specific causes of death were found not to predict overall PUMR, with the exception of cardiovascular disease. Finally, our sample substantially overestimated the prevalence of drug and alcohol-related deaths in the UK. Conclusions: We suggest that more can be done by public health communicators to emphasise the lifestyle and behavioural changes that individuals can make to reduce their general cancer risk. More work is needed to understand the barriers to engaging with preventative behaviours and maintaining a healthy heart. Finally, we call for greater journalistic responsibility when reporting health risks to the public.

Individual characteristics associated with perceptions of control over mortality risk and determinants of health effort

“…The data associated with this study were also used to produce a second article, “Perceptions of control over different causes of death and the accuracy of risk estimations” (Brown et al., 2023), which describes differences between causes of death with respect to perceived control, perceived personal likelihood of death, certainty of risk estimation, perceived knowledge, and the accuracy of perceived prevalence of risk.…”

The Uncontrollable Mortality Risk Hypothesis of Health Behaviour: a Position Paper

“…Figure 1 indicates the use of age 81 (the current mean life expectancy at birth in the UK) which has been used in more recent applications of this measure. Using newly collected data from an online representative sample of the UK (n = 1,463), we investigated the impact of using different age anchors when measuring perceived uncontrollable mortality risk (Brown et al, 2022a;Brown et al, 2022b). Participants provided two scores for perceived uncontrollable mortality risk in response to gender-specific age anchors.…”