Gender disparities in the attribution of cardiac-related symptoms: contribution of common sense models of illness.

Abstract

The role of common sense models of heart disease in the attribution of cardiac-related symptoms was examined in a sample of healthy young adults (N = 224). Participants were less likely to attribute symptoms to possible cardiac causes for female victims reporting stressful life events (M = 5.14) than for female victims without such stressors (M = 6.82) or for male victims with (M = 6.23) or without (M = 6.48) concurrent stressors. Cardiac attributions remained lowest for female/high-stress victims in additional samples of undergraduates (N = 194), community-residing adults (N = 48), and physicians (N = 45), although this outcome sometimes appeared to reflect additive, rather than interactive, effects. Two final experiments with undergraduate samples (Ns = 48 and 60, respectively) indicated that stereotypes associating heart disease with male gender may account for gender disparities in the attribution of cardiac-related symptoms.