Eliciting Causal Beliefs about Heart Attacks: A Comparison of Implicit and Explicit Methods

Abstract

Objective To compare beliefs about the importance of different factors in causing heart attacks, elicited by explicit questionnaire ratings and an implicit vignette task. Method In two separate studies: (1) 107 adults (aged 40-60 years); and (2) 134 students completed two tasks: (a) a questionnaire in which they explicitly rated the importance of a number of causes of heart attacks; and (b) a vignette task in which they implicitly used risk factor information to estimate a hypothetical man's likelihood of a heart attack. Results In both studies, family history was rated as a significantly less important cause than smoking or stress on the explicit questionnaire; in the implicit task, smoking and family history exerted a much greater influence on estimates of risk than did stress. Discussion The causal beliefs elicited by the two methods differ in important respects. The predictive validity of each measure, alone and in combination with other nonquestionnaire-based measures, needs to be determined.