What motivates adherence to medical recommendations? The procedural justice approach to gaining deference in the medical arena

Abstract

Although it is within their long-term interest, patients often fail to follow health care recommendations made by medical experts. This failure results in the widespread occurrence of preventable health problems and a significant increase in health care costs. Taking a new approach to confronting this issue, this paper examines whether the procedural justice model, which has been useful in explaining cooperation with legal and managerial authorities, can provide a basis for increasing patients' willingness to voluntarily adhere to health care recommendations. Three studies tested and supported this proposition. Study 1 experimentally manipulated physicians' procedural fairness or unfairness to explore its influence on patients' acceptance of doctors' recommendations. Study 2 used patients' reports about the fairness of their personal physicians and linked those evaluations to their willingness to follow their doctor's recommendations. Finally, study 3 explored the role of general procedural justice judgments in promoting willingness to accept health policies when they are advocated by private doctors and government health care authorities. The results of all three studies support the argument that when health care authorities use fair procedures, patients are more likely to accept their recommendations. Importantly, this procedural justice effect is distinct from, and in some cases stronger than, the influence of competence.

Expectations, Effectiveness, Trust, and Cooperation: Public Attitudes towards the Israel Police during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…While this methodology has become common in the study of public attitudes towards the police (e.g. Gerber and Jackson, 2013 ; Tyler et al , 2014 ; Hamm et al , 2017 ; Pedersen et al , 2017 ; Pickett et al , 2018 ), it relies on nonprobability convenience samples. As noted earlier, the sample of this study closely resembles the population of adult, non-Orthodox Jews in Israel in terms of personal status, gender, age, and country of origin, but the observed difference in education may be partly attributed to the non-random sampling procedure.…”

Testing a Social Schematic Model of Police Procedural Justice

“…Prior studies of procedural justice have often used college samples (Tankebe, Reisig, and Wang 2016; Wolfe 2011) or other convenience samples (Metcalfe et al 2016; Pickett and Bontrager Ryon 2017; Tyler, Callahan, and Frost 2007). Recently, researchers examining procedural justice have begun using national online convenience samples, most commonly sampled from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) (Gerber and Jackson 2013; Hamm, Trinkner, and Carr 2017; Tyler, Mentovich, and Satyavada 2014; Pedersen, Stritch, and Taggart 2017). We used MTurk samples for both of our studies.…”

The development, implementation and evaluation of clinical practice guidelines in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: a systematic review of literature

“…Further in‐depth research exploring the reasons behind non‐adherence to CPGs is needed as this will enable regulators, health care providers and health care professionals to apply the required clinical practice in a consistent manner, resulting in better outcomes for patients. In particular, further research need to look at the application of regulatory mechanisms using a procedural justice approach towards regulatory requirements that support the argument that when health care authorities use fair procedures rather than sanctions, health care professionals are more likely to overcome barriers to achieving adherence to guidelines [59].…”