The Influence of Doctor-patient Communication on Patients' Willingness to Take Medication

The experiment aims at investigating whether the doctor-patient communication has an influence on patients' willingness to take medication. Patients' attitude towards the medication is manipulated via a critical film sequence. Afterwards patients of the two experimental groups have a communication with one of the investigators of the study. Patients are told that the investigator is a medical doctor. The "doctors" either communicate in a patient-centered or doctor-centered style with the patient. Patients in the control group do not have the possibility to talk to a "medical doctor". Afterwards patients are offered the aforementioned pill that is supposed to be a cognitive enhancer (actually placebo pill). Pill intake is voluntary. The investigators hypothesize that patients in the experimental group with the patient-centered style of communication are more likely to take the pill than patients in the experimental group with the doctor-centered style of communication or patients in the control group.