Temerlin (1970) (Confirmation Bias)

Topic of the Study

Clinical Biases

Aim of the study

Test the effect of clinical biases (conformation bias) on diagnosis

Procedure

\
* Clinical Psychologists watched the interview of a young man. In the test group, they heard a respected clinical psychologist describe the man as presenting neurotic, while he was actually psychotic
* After viewing the tape, they were asked to give their best guess diagnosis from a list of 30 where 10 were psychotic disorders, 10 were neurotic and 10 were miscellaneous personality types

Procedure Design Type

Independent samples design lab experiment

Results

In the control group, nobody diagnosed the gentleman as psychotic. However, 60% of the experimental groups did

Findings

This seems to support the idea of confirmation bias in diagnosis. After hearing a respected clinical psychologist give a disorder, the others sought behaviours that would affirm what the clinician had said