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Marketers have a choice of what to tell consumers and consumers must consider what they are told or not told. Across 6 experiments, we show that consumers fail to differentiate between deliberate and nondeliberate missing information (strategic naiveté) and make generous inferences when they do notice missing information is deliberately withheld (charitability). We also show how marketers can take advantage of this by withholding information. We investigate both sides to (a) show the effects of interventions to encourage consumers to consider deliberate nondisclosure in a less naïve and charitable fashion, (b) demonstrate when marketers should disclose (or not) if consumers are naïve and charitable (i.e., breakeven points), and (c) explore the reasons marketers give for (non)disclosure and consumers' thoughts on why information is missing. Consumers respond differently to distinct but theoretically equivalent framings that increase the salience of nondisclosure. Only when nondisclosure was highly salient, and consumers could compare multiple profiles side by side did consumers believe the nondisclosed information to be the worst possible. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

When expert advisors have conflicts of interest, disclosure is a common regulatory response. In four experiments (three scenario experiments involving medical contexts, and one field experiment involving financial consequences for both parties), we show that disclosure of a financial or nonfinancial conflict of interest can have a perverse effect on the advisor-advisee relationship. Disclosure, perhaps naturally, decreases an advisee's trust in the advice. But disclosure can also lead to concern that failure to follow advice will be interpreted as a signal of distrust. That is, rejecting the advice could suggest that the advisee is insinuating that the advisor could be biased by the conflict of interest. We show that this insinuation anxiety persists whether the disclosure is voluntary or required by law and whether the disclosed conflict is big or small, but it diminishes when the disclosure is made by an external source rather than directly by the advisor.

Background: Financial ties between physicians and the pharmaceutical and medical device industry are common, but little is known about how patient trust is affected by these ties., Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate how viewing online public disclosure of industry payments affects patients' trust ratings for physicians, the medical profession, and the pharmaceutical and medical device industry., Design: This was a randomized experimental evaluation., Participants: There were 278 English-speaking participants over age 18 who had seen a healthcare provider in the previous 12 months who took part in the study., Interventions: Participants searched for physicians on an online disclosure database, viewed payments from industry to the physicians, and assigned trust ratings. Participants were randomized to view physicians who received no payment ($0), low payment ($250-300), or high payment (>$13,000) from industry, or to a control arm in which they did not view the disclosure website. They also were asked to search for and then rate trust in their own physician., Main Measures: Primary outcomes were trust in individual physician, medical profession, and industry. These scales measure trust as a composite of honesty, fidelity, competence, and global trust., Key Results: Compared to physicians who received no payments, physicians who received payments over $13,000 received lower ratings for honesty [mean (SD): 3.36 (0.86) vs. 2.75 (0.95), p < 0.001] and fidelity [3.19 (0.65) vs. 2.89 (0.68), p = 0.01]. Among the 7.9% of participants who found their own physician on the website, ratings for honesty and fidelity decreased as the industry payment to the physician increased (honesty: Spearman's ρ = -0.52, p = 0.02; fidelity: Spearman's ρ = -0.55, p = 0.01). Viewing the disclosure website did not affect trust ratings for the medical profession or industry., Conclusions: Disclosure of industry payments to physicians affected perceptions of individual physician honesty and fidelity, but not perceptions of competence. Disclosure did not affect trust ratings for the medical profession or the pharmaceutical and medical device industry. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02179632 ( https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02179632 ).

This paper explores the impact of disclosures of bias on advisees. Disclosure-informing advisees of a potential bias-is a popular solution for managing conflicts of interest. Prior research has focused almost exclusively on disclosures of financial conflicts of interest but little is known about how disclosures of other types of biases could impact advisees. In medicine, for example, physicians often recommend the treatment they specialize in; e.g., surgeons are more likely to recommend surgery than nonsurgeons. In recognition of this bias, some physicians inform patients about their specialty bias when other similarly effective treatment options exist. Using field data (recorded transcripts of surgeon-patient consultations) from Veteran Affairs hospitals and a randomized controlled laboratory experiment, we examine and find that disclosures of specialty bias increase patients' trust and their likelihood of choosing a treatment in accordance with the physicians' specialty. Physicians in the field also increased the strength of their recommendation to have the specialty treatment when they disclosed their bias or discussed the opportunity for the patient to seek a consultation with a physician from another specialty. These findings have important implications for handling advisor bias, shared advisor-advisee decision-making, and disclosure policies.

Professionals face conflicts of interest when they have a personal interest in giving biased advice. Mandatory disclosure--informing consumers of the conflict--is a widely adopted strategy in numerous professions, such as medicine, finance, and accounting. Prior research has shown, however, that such disclosures have little impact on consumer behavior, and can backfire by leading advisors to give even more biased advice. We present results from three experiments with real monetary stakes. These results show that, although disclosure has generally been found to be ineffective for dealing with unavoidable conflicts of interest, it can be beneficial when providers have the ability to avoid conflicts. Mandatory and voluntary disclosure can deter advisors from accepting conflicts of interest so that they have nothing to disclose except the absence of conflicts. We propose that people are averse to being viewed as biased, and that policies designed to activate reputational and ethical concerns will motivate advisors to avoid conflicts of interest.

Professionals often face conflicts of interest that give them an incentive to provide biased advice, and disclosure (informing advisees about the conflict) is frequently proposed as a solution to the problem. We present 6 experiments that reveal a previously unrecognized perverse effect of disclosure: Although disclosure can decrease advisees' trust in the advice, it can also increase pressure to comply with that advice if advisees feel obliged to satisfy their advisors' personal interests. Hence, disclosure can burden those it is ostensibly intended to protect. Beyond demonstrating the effect, we show that this increased pressure to comply with advice is reduced if (a) the disclosure is provided by an external source rather than from the advisor, (b) the disclosure is not common knowledge between the advisor and advisee, (c) the advisee has an opportunity to change his/her mind later, or (d) the advisee is able to make the decision in private., ((c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.)

Background: In 2005, the International Patient Decisions Aid Standards (IPDAS) Collaboration developed quality criteria for patient decisions aids; one of the quality dimensions dealt with disclosure of conflicts of interest (COIs). The purposes of this paper are to review newer evidence on dealing with COI in the development of patient decision aids and to readdress the theoretical justification and definition for this quality dimension., Methods: The committee conducted a primary systematic literature review to seek published research addressing the question, "What is the evidence that disclosure of COIs in patient decision aids reduces biased decision making?" A secondary literature review included a systematic search for recent meta-analyses addressing COIs in other spheres of health care, including research and publication, medical education, and clinical care., Results: No direct evidence was found addressing this quality dimension in the primary literature review. The secondary review yielded a comprehensive Institute of Medicine report, as well as four relevant meta-analyses addressing disclosure of COIs in health care. They revealed a broad consensus that disclosure of COIs is desirable in such areas as research publication, guideline development, medical education, and clinical care., Conclusions: The committee recommends the criteria that are currently used to operationally define the quality dimension "disclosing conflicts of interest" be changed as follows (changes in italics): Does the patient decision aid: • report prominently and in plain language the source of funding to develop or exclusively distribute the patient decision aid? • report prominently and in plain language whether funders, authors, or their affiliations, stand to gain or lose by choices patients make after using the patient decision aid? Furthermore, based on a consensus that simple disclosure is insufficient to protect users from potentially biased information, the committee recommends that the IPDAS Collaboration consider adding the following criterion when the IPDAS consensus process is next conducted: “Does the patient decision aid: • report that no funding to develop or exclusively distribute the patient decision aid has been received from commercial, for-profit entities that sell tests or treatments included as options in the patient decision aid?”