Cargando…
Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice
In humans as well as other animals, displays of body strength such as power postures or deep masculine voices are associated with prevalence in conflicts of interest and facilitated access to resources. We conduct here an ecological and highly critical test of this hypothesis in a domain that, on fi...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group
2016
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960535/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27456205 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep30219 |
_version_ | 1782444540138881024 |
---|---|
author | Boidron, Laurent Boudenia, Karim Avena, Christophe Boucheix, Jean-Michel Aucouturier, Jean-Julien |
author_facet | Boidron, Laurent Boudenia, Karim Avena, Christophe Boucheix, Jean-Michel Aucouturier, Jean-Julien |
author_sort | Boidron, Laurent |
collection | PubMed |
description | In humans as well as other animals, displays of body strength such as power postures or deep masculine voices are associated with prevalence in conflicts of interest and facilitated access to resources. We conduct here an ecological and highly critical test of this hypothesis in a domain that, on first thought, would appear to be shielded from such influences: access to emergency medical care. Using acoustic manipulations of vocal masculinity, we systematically varied the perceived level of physical dominance of mock patients calling a medical call center simulator. Callers whose voice were perceived as indicative of physical dominance (i.e. those with low fundamental and formant frequency voices) obtained a higher grade of response, a higher evaluation of medical emergency and longer attention from physicians than callers with strictly identical medical needs whose voice signaled lower physical dominance. Strikingly, while the effect was important for physician participants, it was virtually non-existent when calls were processed by non-medically-trained phone operators. This finding demonstrates an unprecedented degree of vulnerability of telephone-based medical decisions to extra-medical factors carried by vocal cues, and shows that it may not simply be assumed that more medical training will shield decisions from such influences. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4960535 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2016 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-49605352016-08-05 Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice Boidron, Laurent Boudenia, Karim Avena, Christophe Boucheix, Jean-Michel Aucouturier, Jean-Julien Sci Rep Article In humans as well as other animals, displays of body strength such as power postures or deep masculine voices are associated with prevalence in conflicts of interest and facilitated access to resources. We conduct here an ecological and highly critical test of this hypothesis in a domain that, on first thought, would appear to be shielded from such influences: access to emergency medical care. Using acoustic manipulations of vocal masculinity, we systematically varied the perceived level of physical dominance of mock patients calling a medical call center simulator. Callers whose voice were perceived as indicative of physical dominance (i.e. those with low fundamental and formant frequency voices) obtained a higher grade of response, a higher evaluation of medical emergency and longer attention from physicians than callers with strictly identical medical needs whose voice signaled lower physical dominance. Strikingly, while the effect was important for physician participants, it was virtually non-existent when calls were processed by non-medically-trained phone operators. This finding demonstrates an unprecedented degree of vulnerability of telephone-based medical decisions to extra-medical factors carried by vocal cues, and shows that it may not simply be assumed that more medical training will shield decisions from such influences. Nature Publishing Group 2016-07-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4960535/ /pubmed/27456205 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep30219 Text en Copyright © 2016, The Author(s) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
spellingShingle | Article Boidron, Laurent Boudenia, Karim Avena, Christophe Boucheix, Jean-Michel Aucouturier, Jean-Julien Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
title | Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
title_full | Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
title_fullStr | Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
title_full_unstemmed | Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
title_short | Emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
title_sort | emergency medical triage decisions are swayed by computer-manipulated cues of physical dominance in caller’s voice |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960535/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27456205 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep30219 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT boidronlaurent emergencymedicaltriagedecisionsareswayedbycomputermanipulatedcuesofphysicaldominanceincallersvoice AT boudeniakarim emergencymedicaltriagedecisionsareswayedbycomputermanipulatedcuesofphysicaldominanceincallersvoice AT avenachristophe emergencymedicaltriagedecisionsareswayedbycomputermanipulatedcuesofphysicaldominanceincallersvoice AT boucheixjeanmichel emergencymedicaltriagedecisionsareswayedbycomputermanipulatedcuesofphysicaldominanceincallersvoice AT aucouturierjeanjulien emergencymedicaltriagedecisionsareswayedbycomputermanipulatedcuesofphysicaldominanceincallersvoice |