How does smoking affect peoples risk for lung cancer?
“), beliefs about the absolute magnitude of their own risk (for example: “Given your current smoking habit, what is your risk for developing lung cancer?”), and beliefs about how their risk compares with that of a specified comparison group (for example: “How does your risk for developing lung cancer compare with that of the typical smoker?”). Evidence that people are aware of the risks posed by a particular pattern of behavior may indicate the successful communication of health risk information, but it cannot tell us whether people recognize the risk as personally relevant. Direct measures of personal risk are needed to answer this question. However, it is not clear whether the criterion for an effective intervention should be based on changing absolute levels of personal risk or in modifying comparative risk. Numerous studies have revealed that people report their own risk of experiencing a health problem to be less than that of the average person and that this occurs even when they
