My Note on Thursday, 17th November 2016

Assalammualaikum wr.wb

Today my class get a job in the English language courses.

Title : “But It’s All Natural!” (Psychology Today January/Febuary 2013

On Thursday, 17th November 2016

The Article:

Do we have an instinctive preference for herbal remedies?

Imagine you have a choice between two medications. One is advertised as “natural,” while the other is a conventionaln pharmaceutical. Would you prefer one to the other, or would you be indifferent? What if you learned that the two substances are chemically identical, with the same success rates and side effects-wold you consider changing your mind?

Opinions about natural medicine canvary widely among cultures and individuals, but when this thought experiment was presented to a diverse sample of philadelphians, 58 percent expressed an immediate preference for the natural remedy. Even when those participants were told that the medications wee chemically idential, only 18 percent of them adjusted their answer to conventional to indifferent if two substances are functionally indistinguishable, with the very same outcomes-what explains the persistent preference for one over the other, just because it’s called “natural”?

Logically, the two products would seem to be interchangeable, but when we make a decision based on limited information, logic doesn’t have much to with it. “The way we perceive risk is not just about the facts, it’s about how the facts feel,” explains David Ropeik, author of How Risky Is It, Really? “Natural risks worry us less.”

A “natural preference” bias is wellestablished when it comes to food and persists even then the arguments people use to justify it become moot (e.g., healthfulness). Our trust in the natural world may be elemental, something that cuts deeper than deliberation. The biophilia hypothesis, introduced by the biologist E.O. Wilson, posits that humans feel an affinity for other living things. “We don’t see nature as out to exploit or harm us,” says psychologist Paul Slovic of Decision Research.

Paul Rozin, the University of Pennsylvania psychologist who led the Philadelphia experiment, has found that when people free associate with the concept of “natural,” almost all of their associations are positive. “The very word,” Slovic notes, “conveys an aura of positives feelings, safety, and wholesomeness. Nature has a very good image.”

Once the image of safety and purity has set in, it’s hard to shake. Even when an herbal medicine yields adverse results, it’s associated with weaker feelings of anger and regret than when the very same damage is done by a synthetic, Princeton psychologist Eldar Shafir has shown. Meanwhile, if an herbal remedy and a prescription both lead to the same positive outcome, subjects tend to say that th herbal option was more effective.

The mostly favorable impressions of herbal treatments suggest that in the U.S., natural medicine is not going away. All told, we spend about $22 billion each year on natural products, and herbal medicine has been the fastest-growing category. Among herbal medicine consumers, naturalness is most  often cited as the primary reason for usage, Shafir found, while a third of respondents in a large Canadian survey said that natural products are better than conventional pharmaceuticals because they are natural. The circular reasoning is enough to make one’s head spin.

The lure of naturalness is so powerful that it can supersede what might otherwise be more pressing concerns. “The naturalness and associated perceived lack of side effects were more important than perceived efficacy,” concludes a recent study in Medical Decision Making that assessed consumers’ attitudes toward sleep aids. Whether or not the medicine actually worked was secondary.

While the study involved in-depth interviews with just 25 subjects, every single one made reference to a product’s “natural” or “chemical” source as a factor in their assessment. They perceived the manufactured medications as more effective but the natural sleep aids as less likely to cause side effects; in the end, the latter won out.

For most natural products, safety is a crucial selling point. When Pfizer researchers had people rate the perceived safety of everything from airplanes to cleaners, they found that herbal medicine were rated as very low risk-safereven coffee and birth control.

Of course, perceived safety and actual safety are different beasts. “Although herbs are often perceived as ‘natural’ and therefore , many different side effects have been reported , owing to active ingredients, contaminants, or interactions with drugs,” notes a review in the Journal of Internal Medicine. Yet a study of Italian woman found that 72 percent of those who used herbal products never told their physicians, largely because they perceived the therapies as risk-free and assumed their doctors wouldn’t know much about the products or care.

Part of the explanation for such logical missteps is that we are often forced to make decisions about medications in an informational vacuum: Herbal medicine may be under-tested and almost completely unregulated, but poor labeling means that even FDA-approved drugs can conspicuously lack the information a reasonable consumer might want.

“People are forced to trust a system that they don’t understand,” says Baruch Fishhoff,a decision scientist CarnegieMellon and a former chair of the FDA’s Risk Commmunication Advisory Committee.”It’s not a consumer failure; it’s a market failure”.

In a regulatory environment thatoften shields consumers from a full, nuanced picture of the risks and benefits of any given substance, it’s no wonder we get tripped up, shortsightedly relying on one of our oldest heuristics: If it comes from the earth, it’s probably fine. Just steer clear of the arsenic.

This my Resume :

There are two types of drugs, namely natural and conventional pharmaceutical drugs.

on thought experiment was presented to a diverse sample of philadelphians, 58 percent expressed an immediate preference for the natural remedy. Even when those participants were told that the medications wee chemically idential, only 18 percent of them adjusted their answer to conventional to indifferent if two substances are functionally indistinguishable.

A “natural preference” bias is wellestablished when it comes to food and persists even then the arguments people use to justify it become moot (e.g., healthfulness).

The biophilia hypothesis, introduced by the biologist E.O. Wilson, posits that humans feel an affinity for other living things. “We don’t see nature as out to exploit or harm us,” says psychologist Paul Slovic of Decision Research.

The mostly favorable impressions of herbal treatments suggest that in the U.S., natural medicine is not going away. All told, we spend about $22 billion each year on natural products, and herbal medicine has been the fastest-growing category. Among herbal medicine consumers, naturalness is most  often cited as the primary reason for usage, Shafir found, while a third of respondents in a large Canadian survey said that natural products are better than conventional pharmaceuticals because they are natural.

The lure of naturalness is so powerful that it can supersede what might otherwise be more pressing concerns. “The naturalness and associated perceived lack of side effects were more important than perceived efficacy,” concludes a recent study in Medical Decision Making that assessed consumers’ attitudes toward sleep aids.

While the study involved in-depth interviews with just 25 subjects, every single one made reference to a product’s “natural” or “chemical” source as a factor in their assessment. They perceived the manufactured medications as more effective but the natural sleep aids as less likely to cause side effects; in the end, the latter won out.

For most natural products, safety is a crucial selling point. When Pfizer researchers had people rate the perceived safety of everything from airplanes to cleaners, they found that herbal medicine were rated as very low risk-safereven coffee and birth control.

These 20 words :

1.     Prefer : lebih suka.

2.    Indifferent : ach tak acuh.

3.    Consider : mempertimbangkan.

4.    Widely : Luas.

5.    Among : kalangan.

6.    Interchangeable : dipertukarkan.

7.    Perceive : memandang.

8.    Deeper : lebih dalam.

9.    Tend : cenderung.

10.  Meanwhile : Sementara itu.

11.   Lead : memimpin.

12.  Regret : penyesalan.

13.  Source : sumber

14.  Manufactured : diproduksi.

15.  Although : meskipun.

16.  Owing : karena

17.  Decisions : keputusan.

18.  Unregulated : tidak diatur.

19.  Relying : mengandalkan.

20. Yields : hasil.

Thank you :)