271- Synthesizers can take in information that both confirms and challenges their
frameworks. Synthesizers can absorb a great deal of information rather easily
and use it to make decisions. They tend to spend most of their information pro-
cessing time in their heads to the neglect of their feelings. You will need to
encourage synthesizers to discuss their emotions. - Confused reasoners are not less intelligent than other patients, but they have
never learned how to prioritize information. They may experience intellectual
confusion because they cannot differentiate between important and trivial infor-
mation. Confused reasoners may spend a great deal of time on a small point
while missing the larger issue, for example, the patient who wonders if her
unborn child who has Down syndrome will look like her while missing the point
that the child will be cognitively impaired, or the patient who wants to know
every statistic associated with any report on his disorder and yet is unable to
discuss how the disorder has and will affect his life.
Other researchers have investigated individual differences in information pro-
cessing styles. They have demonstrated that people differ in their information-
seeking preferences and preferences for how actively involved they wish to be in
decisions about personally threatening situations (Miller 1995 ). One way individu-
als cope under situations of threat includes cognitive confrontation (“monitoring”)
versus cognitive avoidance (“blunting”). Monitors, characterized as information
seekers, are motivated to minimize uncertainty and may benefit from receiving as
much health-related information as possible (Roussi and Miller 2014 ; Miller 1987 ).
Blunters are more likely to seek distractions to avoid thinking about the threat due
to emotional discomfort or cognitive dissonance (Case et al. 2005 ). Monitors prefer
to receive detailed health-related information and desire a more active role in
decision- making about their health (Lindberg 2012 ; Lobb et al. 2005 ; Miller 1995 ;
Pieterse et al. 2007 ; Wakefield et al. 2007 ; Williams-Piehota et al. 2005 ). Blunters
prefer to avoid threat-relevant information and seek distraction from threat and are
more likely to follow medical advice if provided with less complete and mainly less
threatening information (Lindberg 2012 ; Lobb et al. 2005 ; Miller 1995 ; Wakefield
et al. 2007 ; Williams-Piehota et al. 2005 ).
9.5 Religious/Spiritual Dimensions
Religion and spirituality comprise an important aspect of life for a majority of indi-
viduals in many countries such as the USA (Sagaser et al. 2016 ). “Religiosity is
primarily understood as one’s adherence to a denominational belief system or prac-
tice, and can be characterized by a person’s obedience to an explicit set of religious
rules or parameters...In contrast, spirituality is widely-acknowledged to have a
broader definition than religiosity in which both religious and nonreligious perspec-
tives are encompassed, as spirituality is not restricted by the boundaries of any one
religious tradition and is frequently a self-defined concept...Spirituality often centers
9.5 Religious/Spiritual Dimensions