Political affiliation moderates subjective interpretations of COVID-19 graphs.

We examined the relationship between political affiliation, perceptual (percentage, slope) estimates, and subjective judgements of disease prevalence and mortality across three chart types. An online survey (N = 787) exposed separate groups of participants to charts displaying (a) COVID-19 data or (b) COVID-19 data labeled 'Influenza (Flu)'. Block 1 examined responses to cross-sectional mortality data (bar graphs, treemaps); results revealed that perceptual estimates comparing mortality in two countries were similar across political affiliations and chart types (all ps > .05), while subjective judgements revealed a disease x political party interaction (p < .05). Although Democrats and Republicans provided similar proportion estimates, Democrats interpreted mortality to be higher than Republicans; Democrats also interpreted mortality to be higher for COVID-19 than Influenza. Block 2 examined responses to time series (line graphs); Democrats and Republicans estimated greater slopes for COVID-19 trend lines than Influenza lines (p < .001); subjective judgements revealed a disease x political party interaction (p < .05). Democrats and Republicans indicated similar subjective rates of change for COVID-19 trends, and Democrats indicated lower subjective rates of change for Influenza than in any other condition. Thus, while Democrats and Republicans saw the graphs similarly in terms of percentages and line slopes, their subjective interpretations diverged. While we may see graphs of infectious disease data similarly from a purely mathematical or geometric perspective, our political affiliations may moderate how we subjectively interpret the data.

Patient Preference for Telehealth Background Shapes Impressions of Physicians and Information Recall: A Randomized Experiment.

Introduction: Telehealth is increasing rapidly as a health care delivery platform, but we lack empirical evidence regarding how telehealth environments can affect patient experiences. The present research determined how physician's telehealth backgrounds affect various patient outcomes. Methods: Participants viewed a 30-s video of a physician with one of six different virtual backgrounds and reported various socioemotional and cognitive responses to the mock telehealth experience. Results: Although the telehealth background manipulation did not impact participants' socioemotional or cognitive responses, participants' subjective perceptions of the telehealth backgrounds were related to important clinical outcomes, such as their ability to remember critical information from the appointment and overall satisfaction with the experience. Discussion: Telehealth environments may result in tradeoffs between patient experience, subjective impressions of clinicians, and information recall. Conclusions: A physician's telehealth background can have measurable impact on patients' telehealth experiences, suggesting a need for careful background selection and design.

Environmental Considerations for Effective Telehealth Encounters: A Narrative Review and Implications for Best Practice.

Introduction: Due to the reduction in-person visits, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to expansions in the use of telehealth technology to provide patient care, yet clinicians lack evidence-based guidance on how to most effectively use video communication to enhance patient experience and outcomes. Methods: A narrative review was conducted to describe environmental factors derived from research in social psychology and human-computer interaction (HCI) that may guide effective video-based clinician-patient telehealth communication. Results: Factors such as nonverbal cues, spatial proximity, professionalism cues, and ambient features play an important role in patient experience. We present a visual typology of telehealth backgrounds to inform clinical practice and guide future research. Discussion: A growing body of empirical evidence indicates that environmental cues may play an essential role in establishing psychological safety, improving patient experience, and supporting clinical efficacy in these virtual experiences. Conclusion: The expanded use of telehealth visits suggests the need for further research on the relative effects of these environmental factors on patient experience and outcomes.

Virtual environments to study emotional responses to clinical communication: A scoping review.

OBJECTIVE: This scoping review explores the potential for virtual environments (VE) to evaluate emotional outcomes in clinical communication research. Authors representing multiple disciplines use review results to propose potential research opportunities and considerations. METHODS: We utilized a structured framework for scoping reviews. We searched four literature databases for relevant articles. We applied multidisciplinary perspectives to synthesize relevant potential opportunities for emotion-focused communications research using VE. RESULTS: Twenty-one articles met inclusion criteria. They applied different methodological approaches, including a range of VE technologies and diverse emotional outcome measures, such as psychophysiological arousal, emotional valence, or empathy. Major research topics included use of virtual reality to provoke and measure emotional responses, train clinicians in communication skills, and increase clinician empathy. CONCLUSION: Researchers may leverage VE technologies to ethically and systematically examine how characteristics of clinical interactions, environments, and communication impact emotional reactions and responses among patients and clinicians. Variability exists in how VE technologies are employed and reported in published literature, and this may limit the internal and external validity of the research. However, virtual reality can provide a low-cost, low-risk, experimentally controlled, and ecologically valid approach for studying clinician-patient communication. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS: Future research should leverage psychophysiological measures to further examine emotional responses during clinical communication scenarios and clearly report virtual environment characteristics to support evaluation of study conclusions, study replicability, and meta-analyses.