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What's That Symptom? Experts Warn of Self-Diagnosis Via the Web
Date:7/27/2012

ms were someone else's. In other words, their accuracy in correctly gauging the likelihood of H1N1 infection dropped if they were thinking about their own symptoms.

Why the difference? "We explain these effects using the concept of psychological distance," Yan said. With distancing -- in other words, thinking about someone else rather than yourself -- people tend to rely more on broader information such as statistics (that is, the likelihood any one person will get disease X) and less on information specific to the individual, such as the symptoms he or she is having.

"Consumers often fear the worst when it comes to their own health, while maintaining a calm objectivity with regard to others," Yan said. If you've got pain in the chest, you think: heart attack. If a friend of a friend has the same symptoms, you say: probably indigestion.

But this type of thinking can have downsides, the authors write, often leading "to mistakenly diagnosing oneself as possessing a serious disease, causing both unnecessary anxiety and wasteful medical expenditure." They add that, "mistaken self-diagnoses of this sort are particularly likely given the ease of information access on the Internet, which frequently leads consumers to engage in 'symptom-matching' exercises."

The findings ring true with Dr. Peter Galier, an internal medicine specialist at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, who reviewed the findings.

"I think it's human nature," he said. People are much more likely to worry about themselves and family members, he said, than about strangers.

Getting information via the Web can also make it difficult to decide what symptoms mean in the absence of a doctor's analysis. "When people are able to access a lot of information that isn't filtered, and they don't have expertise in the field, they don't know how to prioritize the information," Galier explained.

That's true whether you're investigating that strange knocking noise in your car bu
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