The psychologic variables, which were not included
until the last step, led to the greatest increase in variance,
which was between 3.9% and 16.0%. More pronounced
fear avoidance beliefs and an external locus of control were
associated with more pronounced communication needs on
many scales. As can be expected, all areas of communication
(except patient-centered communication) were more
important for patients who had higher values for warmth as
a personality characteristic. Unexpectedly, gregariousness
was negatively associated with the preference for emotionally
supportive communication. However, this relationship was
just barely significant. Perceived efficacy in patient-physician
interaction was the one predictor that was most consistently
related to all areas of communication. As expected, persons
with greater communication self-efficacy also had higher
expectations of patient-physician communication. Overall,
between 8.2% and 18.6% of the variance in communicationpreferences was explained. The most variance was explained
for the preference for a patient-centered communication style
and the least for the preference for communication about
personal circumstances. In line with the low explained variance
are the low bivariate correlations between predictors
and communication preferences (Table 3). The maximum
correlation was r=0.183.