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

David P. French

GKT School of Medicine, UK, david.french{at}kcl.ac.uk

Theresa M. Marteau

GKT School of Medicine, UK

Victoria Senior

GKT School of Medicine, UK

John A. Weinman

GKT School of Medicine, UK

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.

Key Words: causal beliefs • implicit/explicit • methods

Journal of Health Psychology, Vol. 7, No. 4, 433-444 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/1359105302007004331
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