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Shankar Vedantam - August 2014
Economists Giulio Zanella and Ritesh Banerjee were curious to know whether news of a colleague’s breast cancer diagnosis would prompt women working in the same office to be pro-active about their own health by going for a screening mammography. As NPR social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam reports, the patient’s coworkers were actually less likely to have a mammogram. The reason may have something to do with “information aversion — the idea that maybe you don’t want to find out about some really bad news because of the way it makes you feel.”
While it’s understandable that learning of a colleague’s cancer diagnosis can be unsettling, the fact is it can also be a good time to educate yourself and make sure you’re doing all you can to safeguard your own health. For the full article, click here. For tips on how to help your colleague, click here.
Original source: www.npr.org
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