Scared Straight or Scared to Death? Fatalism in Response to Disease Risks
研究发现，人们对疾病风险的认知可能产生宿命论效应：高风险信念反而导致更多冒险行为。通过在马拉维随机提供HIV传播的真实低风险信息，实验显示该信息使性活动平均略有增加，但初始风险信念高的人群（尤其是基线性活跃者）性活动显著下降。
Abstract This paper shows that responses to disease risks can be ‘fatalistic’: higher risk beliefs can lead to more risk-taking rather than less. Intuitively, this can occur because high risk beliefs raise not only the chance of contracting the disease (which raises the marginal cost of risk-taking), but also the perceived chance that you are already infected (which lowers the marginal cost). I test for fatalism by randomly providing information about the true (low) average risk of HIV transmission in Malawi. Consistent with rational fatalism, the treatment causes sexual activity to rise slightly on average, but decline sharply for people with high initial risk beliefs—especially those with high baseline levels of sexual activity.