Can prospect theory explain risk-seeking behavior by terminally ill patients?
Date
2005-11
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Repository Usage Stats
views
downloads
Citation Stats
Attention Stats
Abstract
Patients with life-threatening conditions sometimes appear to make risky treatment decisions as their condition declines, contradicting the risk-averse behavior predicted by expected utility theory. Prospect theory accommodates such decisions by describing how individuals evaluate outcomes relative to a reference point and how they exhibit risk-seeking behavior over losses relative to that point. The authors show that a patient's reference point for his or her health is a key factor in determining which treatment option the patient selects, and they examine under what circumstances the more risky option is selected. The authors argue that patients' reference points may take time to adjust following a change in diagnosis, with implications for predicting under what circumstances a patient may select experimental or conventional therapies or select no treatment.
Type
Department
Description
Provenance
Subjects
Citation
Permalink
Published Version (Please cite this version)
Publication Info
Rasiel, Emma B, Kevin P Weinfurt and Kevin A Schulman (2005). Can prospect theory explain risk-seeking behavior by terminally ill patients?. Med Decis Making, 25(6). pp. 609–613. 10.1177/0272989X05282642 Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/2641.
This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
Collections
Scholars@Duke
Emma Rasiel
Emma Rasiel is the Teaching Director of the Duke Financial Economics Center, as well as Associate Chair and Professor of Economics at Duke. Emma’s role includes developing and delivering curricular and extra-curricular programs to Duke undergraduates to improve their preparedness for careers in business and finance. Emma’s regularly taught courses include Practical Financial Markets, Intermediate Finance, and Equity Research. She also enjoys teaching Behavioral Finance each summer on her Duke in London study away program and invites anyone to check out her online Behavioral Finance course, offered on the Coursera MOOC teaching platform.
The extra-curricular programs for Duke undergraduates that Emma spearheads include bank-sponsored case study competitions; an alumni-student mentoring program for 80 students each year; and Spring Mock Interview Days, during which more than 100 students have mock interviews with 40+ alumni, in preparation for investment bank recruiting season. Emma is also collaborating with Pratt for their Master's in FinTech which launched in Fall 2020. She was appointed Associate Chair of the Economics department in 2016.
Emma holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from Oxford University (1986) and an MBA from the Wharton School (class of 1990). She joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 and spent two years in their New York office, subsequently moving to London to spend five years trading European bond options. She was promoted to Executive Director in 1994 and left Goldman in 1997 to pursue further academic studies at Duke. She completed her PhD in finance at the Fuqua School in 2003, moved across campus to the Economics Department, and feels very fortunate that she has been able to remain at Duke ever since.
Emma enjoys horseback riding in the cooler months of the year, water skiing in the warmer ones, and poker all year round.
Kevin Phillip Weinfurt
Kevin Weinfurt, Ph.D., is the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair of Faculty in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Duke University Medical Center. Dr. Weinfurt also holds faculty appointments in Psychology and Neuroscience, Philosophy, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, the Duke Clinical Research Institute, and the Trent Center for Bioethics, Humanities & History of Medicine. Dr. Weinfurt worked part-time for four years as a Special Governmental Employee with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, developing guidance for the Patient-Focused Drug Development initiative. Dr. Weinfurt received his PhD in psychology at Georgetown University and did graduate work in the history of science and philosophy of mind at Linacre College, Oxford.
Dr. Weinfurt researches clinical outcome assessments, pragmatic trial methodology, and bioethics. Currently, Dr. Weinfurt is co-PI of the coordinating center for the NIH Health Systems Research Collaboratory, which is dedicated to improving understanding of how to conduct pragmatic clinical trials. Within the NIH Collaboratory, he has led or co-led work on bioethics, patient-reported outcomes, and disseminating lessons learned. He is currently an Associate Editor of Clinical Trials. He served on the Board of Directors for the International Society of Quality of Life Research and was a member of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Clinical Trials Advisory Panel. Dr. Weinfurt served as a member of the Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Human Research Protections (SACHRP), which provides expert advice and recommendations to the Secretary of HHS on issues pertaining to protecting human subjects in research.
As an educator, Dr. Weinfurt has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in bioethics, health measurement, psychology, and research methods.
Areas of Expertise: Bioethics, Health Measurement, Health Services Research, and Health Behavior
Unless otherwise indicated, scholarly articles published by Duke faculty members are made available here with a CC-BY-NC (Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial) license, as enabled by the Duke Open Access Policy. If you wish to use the materials in ways not already permitted under CC-BY-NC, please consult the copyright owner. Other materials are made available here through the author’s grant of a non-exclusive license to make their work openly accessible.