NU Ideas Season 3 | No.3

Tuesday 10th December | 6pm

“Armed with knowledge”: Can technology impact experiences of epistemic injustice in health?

Dr Alison Osborne and Dr Elizabeth Sillence

Senior Research Assistant in Psychology / Associate Professor in Psychology

Department of Psychology, Northumbria University.

Often, we hear that someone does not feel they have been listened to or believed when engaging with a healthcare professional about their health, the assumption that they do not know their own bodies in favour of ‘doctor knows best’.

This is particularly the case with individuals seeking support/advice/help for contested illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia and recently long covid. This phenomenon is best described by Miranda Fricker as epistemic injustice, ‘when someone is wronged in their capacity as a knower’. In order to find answers to these health experiences, digital health information is often relied upon as an effective way to seek advice and gain knowledge. The popularisation of health tracking through mobile apps and wearables has also contributed to this and provides an opportunity to evidence health experiences. Some recent research has begun to consider how knowledge gained through digital technology can impact epistemic injustice, whether through menstrual tracking, engaging in the creation of vlogs or mobilising learned scripts obtained through podcasts.

We will present our recent work in the area of women’s health as examples of how technology can support women in conversations with healthcare professionals and aid in potentially reducing experiences of epistemic injustice.

The double dividend of safety: How feeling safer can improve people’s health behaviour

Dr Gillian Pepper, Assistant Professor Health & Wellbeing Lead, Urban Futures IDRT & Psychology Sustainability Lead

Department of Psychology Northumbria University

If you were to feel that your life could be cut short at any moment by violence or natural disaster, would you worry about quitting smoking, or eating healthily?

Over the past decade, I have worked to test the predictions of a theoretical mathematical model, which proposed that people who are exposed to health risks beyond their personal control should be less likely to take care of their health. In a series of studies, I’ve found that perceived control over risk is associated with health behaviour. My behavioural experiments have also shown that priming people to feel more in control of their health leads them to make healthier choices – suggesting that the relationship is causal. In more recent studies, my colleagues and I have examined the risks that people feel they can and cannot control and looked at the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on perceived risk and health behaviour.

A big implication of our findings is something we call the double dividend of safety: The idea that, when we make safety improvements, we have a two-fold effect. First, there is the direct

benefit of the safety improvement itself and, second, the benefits of the improved health behaviour that results.

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