SIEVERDING, Germany, July 30 (UPI) -- A German researcher says men who have never been tested for cancer are more motivated to be tested when they learn most men have been tested at some time.
Monika Sieverding of the University of Heidelberg and colleagues find men never tested for cancer were less likely to say they would be tested in the next year after learning 16 percent of German men had been screened for cancer in the past year.
However, the study, published in Psychological Science, found men never yet tested for cancer were much more likely to say they would have cancer testing in the coming year after learning 65 percent of German men -- at some time in their life -- had been tested for cancer.
"For us it is so interesting because this is very easy to change," Sieverding says in a statement. "You cannot change attitudes easily, or the image of the average cancer screening patient, but it is easy to change the framing of the campaign."
Sieverding and the other researchers approached men age 45 or older in the pedestrian areas of two large German cities and surveyed the men who had never been tested for cancer.
