ABSTRACT
How well do we accurately detect physiological changes that occur within our own bodies? Although it is clearly adaptive to perceive potentially dangerous physiological signals, various health statistics indicate that individuals often misperceive these signals, thus contributing to needless medical expenses, health complications, and even death. For example, the failure to perceive and report early symptoms of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and similar life-threatening diseases reflects clear distortions and biases in the symptom perception process. Similarly, millions of dollars are wasted each year on unnecessary operations, medication, and use of medical personnel due to patients’ and possibly physicians’ misperception of internal state. As these examples illustrate, people are often very poor at accurately perceiving physiological change. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the accuracy issue in detail.
