Investigating the Impact of Chronic Illness on Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are based on systematic thought processes caused by our tendency to simplify information processing through a filter of personal experience and preferences. However, cognitive biases impact the decision-making of patients with a chronic illness. Our team analyzed the presence of language patterns and psycholinguistic markers characteristic of interpretation and reporting recall cognitive biases within Reddit posts by individuals who have self-disclosed a chronic illness. Visual, interrupted time series, and n-gram analyses of associated LIWC dimensions suggest that interpretation bias is more prevalent in Redditors that have self-disclosed a chronic illness and exhibit a statistically significant increase upon self-disclosure. Additionally, Redditors who have self-disclosed both a chronic illness and a comorbid mental health disorder show more signs of reporting/recall bias. While attempts to model the dataset provided only poor classification results, a random forest classifier was able to classify seven of ten LIWC dimensions with an accuracy higher than chance. These findings suggest that embodiment plays a role in shaping cognitive processes and hence behavior. It is therefore crucial that clinicians and chronically ill patients remain aware of the heightened risk of cognitive bias in order to ensure that patients are able to make the most appropriate decisions during clinical intervention.